Stupid American History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions

ANew York TimesBestseller! Welcome to the land of the free, the home of the brave--and, apparently, the dumb, bizarre, and gullible . . . ANew York TimesBestseller! Welcome to the land of the free, the home of the brave--and, apparently, the dumb, bizarre, and gullible . . . Did you know that . . . John Tyler was on his knees playing marbles when he was informed that Benjamin Harrison had died and he was now president of the United StatesFor reasons still unknown, Texas congressman Thomas Lindsay Blanton, a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher and prohibitionist, inserted dirty words into the Congressional Record in 1921--for which his colleagues officially censured him by a vote of 293-0Two US presidents were indentured servants--and one of them ran away and wound up with a $10 reward posted for his captureFrom Columbus to George W. Bush, the bestselling coauthor ofAmerica's Dumbest Criminalsleads us through the many mythconceptions of our nation's history in this lively book, exposing lots of entertaining moments of idiocy and inanity along the time line.