Here’s a great gift for a history buff — 100 Documents That Changed the World: From the Magna Carta to Wikileaks.

What documents would you expect to see on the list? The Dead Sea Scrolls? The Declaration of Independence? The Communist Manifesto?

You’ll find those along with others you might not have considered, like the Mahabharata (a Sanskrit epic), Ad Extirpanda (a document authorizing the use of torture in the medieval Inquisition), John Snow’s cholera map (he was the “father of modern epidemiology”), the Sykes-Picot Agreement (which discusses how England and France will carve up the Middle East after World War I), George Orwell’s 1984, and the first Tweet.

The cover is a bit staid, but I was absolutely fascinated by this book. With one page of context and description per document, it’s just enough to keep the amateur exclaiming and turning the pages. And of course there are pictures of all the documents, which are arranged chronologically. I think this book would make a great gift and spur readers on to research the documents that interest them most. I certainly learned a lot through my quick read.

Instead of a straight review I thought it would be more fun to post a quiz of some of the trivia I learned from this book. Let me know how you score!

I hope you learned something new and are now planning to pick up a copy of 100 Documents That Changed the World!