Not So!: Popular Myths About America's Past from Columbus to Clinton

Rating:
Summary: Hillary and the Indians
Review: This book is conservative Boller's cash cow. All he has to do is take grade school myths and "debunk" them using the encyclopedia. Who really thought Columbus was trying to prove that the world was round? Not since Kindergarten have I thought on such a precious issue. Only conservatives who rarely read books actually believe such things. To believe that Columbus was trying to prove the world round is also to believe it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and a big boat with a male and female of every species on the planet could fit onto the Titanic. Boller also intends to "prove" that the Indians were not "one with nature" but polluters and warmongers like us. Not so! America pollutes more than any other country in the world. Just because others did it doesn't mean it's right to kill people! We are the ones who used the bomb, people. In any case, the brainwashing is so thinly veiled as to be almost embarrassing, not that a conservative would be able to lift the wool from their eyes. In the very title we have his real thesis: "Clinton = questionable," and the chapters inside follow suit "environmental pollution = OK," "Hillary = lazy lesbian." Attention readers, leave it to the gullible students at the university where this guy teaches to sink their wooden teeth into questions of orthadontal history. A better book: Man rises from the dead: Not so! Man lives inside a whale: Not so! Frogs rain down from the sky: Not so! Man feeds a whorde of beachnicks with 10 fish: Not so!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent layman's book
Review: This may not be a "scholarly" tome, that just makes it readable. In the various chapters he relates on what is commonly believed is false. The Jefferson/Hemmings controversy will never being agreed upon by all. Some reviewers have claimed there was a right-wing biased, but if he was right-winged biased, then why did he defend Elanor Roosevelt from charges of infidelity. If he was so conservative, then how come he did not write so fondly of Joseph McCarthy as Ann Coulter has done?

Written by a Emiritus Professor of History, you can rest assured of this book's accuracy. I highly recommend. Even as a professional historian, I find this a delightful break from harsh "scholarly" tomes.