A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History

This is a great, well, bathroom read. Or something to leave in the car and pick up to browse through while waiting for the kid's soccer practice to end. Sitting down and just reading through it kinda muddles things together, so I'd recommend a break between chapters. However, you will learn a lot about American History in the process as the "foolishly forgotten" touch on so many other thing you may already know or think that you know.

Michael Farquhar's latest edition in this series of books is as good as the previous ones. They are fact filled with humorous, interesting, and at times, shocking stories. There's never a dull moment; it's only due to the evils of work and sleep that I'm forced to put down his books. I've purchased all of his earlier books and recommend you do the same if you enjoy this one even one iota. 5/5

Like any great subject, history is unfathomable - you can never really get to the bottom of it, as there is always more to learn, more facts to cram in, and better explanations. So all histories ever written are incomplete. Michael Farquhar knows this, and in previous books has mined the little-known corners of history to bring forth surprising and entertaining pictures of odd personalities left out of other history books. He has done so again in A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History (Penguin Books). Thirty short chapters, one for each character, comprise a book that is great fun. Part of the fun is that the forgetting that history has accomplished for some of these characters is completely arbitrary, and they ought to be part of the regular history books. Part of the fun is that some of them played roles that are just the opposite of the glowing examples of their peers that made it into the history books. And part of the fun is that many of these people were just plain nuts. One of the figures who truly got shortchanged in the history books is forgotten merely because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could find good rhymes for "Revere" but not for "Dawes". Perhaps that's an oversimplification, but "Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of William Dawes" just doesn't work at all. Yet Dawes was every bit as bold a rider as Paul Revere, and he had the same assignment, to ride warning from Boston to Lexington on the same night. Dawes did get a poetic consolation prize many years later, a little-known poem in 1896, which ends: No one has heard of me because He was Revere and I was Dawes. Among the rascals mentioned here is one who sailed on the Mayflower. Put aside your stereotypes of the Puritan Pilgrims; John Billington was a bully with a bad temper and little sense of right and wrong. He may have instigated a mutiny on the ship itself, and after he signed the Mayflower Compact to work with all the others for the good of the colony, he quickly forgot any such intention. He murdered a fellow Plymouth colonist in 1630, and was the first murderer hanged in the colonies. Another horrid example of humanity here is Hetty Green, an heiress who played the markets in the late nineteenth century with success few men had equaled. She was, however, a miser who loved money far more than her family members. When her little son injured his foot, she did nothing about the injury for years, although it grew steadily worse. When his agony became great enough to distract even his mother, she finally set out to get treatment for him, but she dressed as a pauper so that such treatment would be free. She had done this so often that all the free clinics in Manhattan and Brooklyn recognized her and turned her away, so she was forced to make her estranged husband pay for the treatment. The leg had gotten so bad by the time

As the cover blurb reminds us, countless fascinating characters are relegated to the footnotes of history, a situation that Michael Farquhar tries to remedy in this entertaining book. Farquhar shines a light on thirty characters who would otherwise remain shrouded in the mists of obscurity. One obvious problem is that some people *deserve* to languish in obscurity. Despite Farquhar's enthusiasm, not everyone profiled in this book lived an interesting, let alone a fascinating, life. A useful test question would have been "Is this someone I would enjoy sitting next to on a plane?" Had the author applied it, several characters would not have made the cut, and this would have been a better book. Farquhar, or his editors, might have realized that: * The sadly pedestrian criminal behavior of John Billington does not become interesting just because he was a passenger on the Mayflower. * It's a shame that Mary Dyer was hanged for her Quaker beliefs, but a mildly remarkable death doesn't mean her life was interesting. * That evangelist Zilpha Elaw was a black woman might be unusual, but doesn't make reading about her call to Jesus, and subsequent proselytizing, any less tedious. (You wouldn't invite Mary or Zilpha into your home for a riveting discussion of their religious enthusiasms; reading about them is no less unappealing. The guideline that other people's religious beliefs are not a good topic of conversation is a sensible one.) * The lives of Richard Johnson and Clement Vallandigham do nothing to dispel the conclusion that most unsuccessful politicians earn their obscurity. * A single accomplishment (e.g. inventing Mother's Day, or the Fosbury flop) may deserve nothing more than a footnote in history. Excluding the duds would have allowed a more expanded account of the genuinely interesting lives. I would have liked to learn more about these fascinating characters: Anne Bonney, pirate of the Caribbean Louise Boyd, socialite and Arctic explorer Mary Jemison, "white woman of the Genesee" Sarah Winnemucca, "Paiute princess" William J. Burns, "America's Sherlock Holmes" Gaston B. Means, "American scoundrel" Beulah Louise Henry, inventor, "the female Edison" Elizabeth Bentley, "Red Spy Queen" Rose O' Neale Greenhow, grande dame and spy. Oliver Perry, "Outlaw of the East" James Callender, muckraker for the First Amendment Isaac Parker, "The Hanging Judge" Edwin Forrest, "First American Idol" Guy Gabaldon, "Pied Piper of Saipan" Each of these chapters left me wanting more. In particular, devoting fewer than three pages to Beulah Louise Henry seemed almost criminal. Vignettes of more even length, dedicated to the 20 most interesting characters, would have made for a much better book. But let's not quibble. 20 out of 30 is an excellent batting average. Farquhar writes very well, with an enthusiasm that is engaging. The format of the book makes it ideal for browsing. Although your choice and mine may differ, I'll wager that there will be at least half

I've read all Michael Farquhar's books and I'm constantly amazed by the way he makes history so much fun. In this latest collection, he assembles stories of some of the most fascinating Americans you've never heard about--from the Mayflower murderer to the mother of Mother's Day. Each chapter is a delight, focusing on a different neglected notable who, as Farquhar writes in his Introduction, "may not necessarily have shaped the American experience, but undoubtedly added to its unique texture." I was particularly enlightened by the stories of Rose O'Neale Greenhow, the socialite spy during the Civil War, and William J. Burns, the detective dubbed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as "America's Sherlock Holmes." As usual, Farquhar's writing sparkles. And though the tone is slightly different from his other books--these aren't all outrageous scandals, after all--I think this may be his best collection yet.