• Summary
• Full Review
• Our Rating of this book

Summary

Highly Recommended

Book Description:
"...[A]re The Da Vinci Code’s claims fact or just plain fiction? Is the novel well-researched as claimed?...Best selling author Carl Olson and journalist Sandra Miesel answer these and other important questions. Their painstaking research into The Da Vinci Code and its sources reveals some surprising truths. No one who has read or heard about The Da Vinci Code should miss this provocative and illuminating new book."

We've picked this one as the best of the large group of books out on The Da Vinci Code (see more here). We'll reserve examples from the text for the article just linked; here we'll just discuss some of the review points.

I will get my one "complaint" out of the way: The Da Vinci Hoax is not written in a way that will be useful for easy reference. If you want that, reach for Richard Abanes' book on TDC; but this is not really a complaint at all (hence the quotes) because it is the goal of Miesel and Olson not only that you learn what is wrong with Brown's work, but also learn it well and in detail. You'll find here levels of detail and background unknown in the other books, and you'll also find depth on subjects many of the other books don't touch. (Indeed, the chapter on errors about da Vinci himself is the largest in the book!) It's a good way to appreciate just how much of a klutzola Brown actually is when it comes to reporting history -- especially because the authors have made an effort to figure out exactly where Brown got some of his "information" (thus showing how little "research" he actually did).

Olson and Miesel deserve three thumbs up for depth of research (see inside for what a bibliography and notes should look like), clear presentation, and depth of coverage. You'll like Olson and Miesel if you like Tekton; they share our sense of humor (rapier wit has been their forte in less formal writings; it is muted in this text). Olson has his own website on which he includes a "Deeply Disturbed Da Vinci Code Fan Corner" (I could add a few letters to it myself, and noted to him that "deeply disturbed" and "Da Vinci Code Fan" seemed to me a case of saying the same thing twice). I'll close with this significant note: Da Vinci Hoax has the endorsement of none other than Philip Jenkins, top notch scholar-author of Hidden Gospels. Need I say more to get readers of this site salivating? Buy 50 copies and have them air dropped into Dan Brown's swimming pool at once.