Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States
If you love to laugh, if you love your country, if you are unaware that "the Sixth Amendment states that if you are accused of a crime, you have the right to a trial before a jury of people too stupid to get out of jury duty," Dave Barry Slept Here is the book for you. Every single momentous event and crucial movement is covered, including:\ The Birthing Contractions of a Nation Kicking Some British Butt The Forging of a Large, Wasteful Bureaucracy The Civil War: A Nation Pokes Itself in the...
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If you love to laugh, if you love your country, if you are unaware that "the Sixth Amendment states that if you are accused of a crime, you have the right to a trial before a jury of people too stupid to get out of jury duty," Dave Barry Slept Here is the book for you. Every single momentous event and crucial movement is covered, including:The Birthing Contractions of a Nation Kicking Some British Butt The Forging of a Large, Wasteful Bureaucracy The Civil War: A Nation Pokes Itself in the Eyeball The Fifties: Peace, Prosperity, Brain Death The Reagan-Bush Years: Napping Toward Glory And much more! Publishers Weekly Miami Herald syndicated columnist Barry here assembles a funny U.S. history replete with malapropisms (Ferdinard and Imelda of Spain financed Columbus), parodies (``This land is your land, / This land is my land, / Looks like one of us / Has a forged deed to the land.''), literal-mindedness (President Monroe Doctrine) and, above all, anachronisms (the Wrights' first flight was canceled because of equipment problems at O'Hare). Several clever gags run through the book--one about the significant contributions of women and minorities (although none is ever detailed), another ascribing the date of every major event to October 8 (for ease in remembering) and a third featuring the Hawley-Smoot tariff, which had an immediate impact on the Great Depression. There are few heroes in Barry's pantheon, and only an occasional villain--principally Richard Nixon--while other widely admired figures, like Mark Twain and Winston Churchill, are given their lumps. Author tour. (June)
\ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ Miami Herald syndicated columnist Barry here assembles a funny U.S. history replete with malapropisms (Ferdinard and Imelda of Spain financed Columbus), parodies (``This land is your land, / This land is my land, / Looks like one of us / Has a forged deed to the land.''), literal-mindedness (President Monroe Doctrine) and, above all, anachronisms (the Wrights' first flight was canceled because of equipment problems at O'Hare). Several clever gags run through the book--one about the significant contributions of women and minorities (although none is ever detailed), another ascribing the date of every major event to October 8 (for ease in remembering) and a third featuring the Hawley-Smoot tariff, which had an immediate impact on the Great Depression. There are few heroes in Barry's pantheon, and only an occasional villain--principally Richard Nixon--while other widely admired figures, like Mark Twain and Winston Churchill, are given their lumps. Author tour. (June)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThis book creates a serious problem--how to read it in public without laughing out loud. Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from the Miami Herald , writes deft, gaily satirical comedy which always borders on the ridiculous and sometimes crosses that border. His idea of making humor out of many familiar events and notable figures in American history is appealingly audacious. Written in the form of a history text, with ``questions'' at the end of chapters, the book starts with the days when there were ``no roads, no cities, no shopping malls, no Honda dealerships'' and ends at the point of landing ``a manned spacecraft on Trump''--the planet, of course. Ideal reading for gloomy afternoons and other times that require pleasant diversion.-- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Lib . & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston\ \
