The Abridged History

"We have left out the dull parts. Take, for example, the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraska. "The hell with the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraska"--that is our motto. This philosophy left us with plenty of extra room, which enabled us to provide you, the reader, with large, restful expanses of white space, as well as numerous riveting 'behind-the-scenes' historical anecdotes that you will not find in a normal history book because we made them up."

—Dave Barry Slept Here, introduction

Uncle trope to The Abridged Series, which parodies history in a similar fashion. The aim of The Abridged History is to entertain rather than educate, making plenty of Historical In Jokes and generally playing by the Rule of Funny rather than sticking to boring facts.

In books, expect each chapter to end in a textbook-like set of ridiculous exercises. Silly footnotes are also common.

Examples of The Abridged History include:

Film

• Mel Brooks: The History of the World, Part One
• The Jack Black movie Year One is something like this, with biblical stories.

Literature

• 1066 and All That: a Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates (Older Than Television)
  • Two modern history sequels to 1066 by different authors: 1984 And All That and 1966 And All That.
• It All Started With Columbus
• Dave Barry Slept Here
  • He did something similar with his "Year in Review" annual feature. He collected some of these into another book which also started off with an abridged history in the same style has his "Slept Here" book.
• The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy
• A Short History Of Nearly Everything is a semi-serious take on this.
• The Horrible Histories series.
• The Daily Show's America: The Book
• Scotland: A Very Peculiar History - Volume 1: With No Added Haggis and Volume 2: With No Added Bagpipes.
• Richard Armour's It All Started With Columbus, which was written and published at the very start of the 1960s and thus ends with the beginning of JFK's Presidency.

Theatre

• The Complete History of America (Abridged)

Comic Books

• The Cartoon History of the Universe (which covers the big bang to Columbus) and it's sequel, History of the Modern World (everything after 1492) series by Larry Gonick. Although it does go quite a bit into actual history and facts and dates, the panels and commentary are drawn in a way that is meant to be both humorous and educational.

Western Animation

• The cartoon series Histeria!