Description
Featuring a foreword by Stephen Colbert, this collection of historical facts and inaccuracies is presented in calendar form, from Julius Caesar's invention of New Year's Day (coinciding, of course, with the introduction of the Julian calendar) to Dick Clark's association with festivities in Times Square on December 31. Regan, a noted humorist and historian, balances mockery and satire with a few honest facts, warning readers that this book should not be used as a reference with the lone exception of "William Howard Taft fat jokes." While the hipness quotient may be a bit overstated, this book should provide plenty of chuckles for those who know their history, and know not to take it too seriously. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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You can't change the past, but with Mass Historia, Chris Regan has done a very fine job of making fun of it." --Stephen ColbertThe History Channel meets Comedy Central in this sidesplitting, quasi-historical almanac by Chris Regan, a five time Emmy award winning comedy writer and one of the coauthors of Jon Stewart's bestselling America (The Book).Regan flips through our nation's historical calendar to offer up unknown, unrepentant, and often-unbelievable facts for every day of the year. Based on genuine, historical occurrences, Regan sets out to rewrite history with his unique satirical voice.As Regan explains, "Enjoy this book, learn something from it, but do not reference it in any scholarly paper." Consider entries like June 12th, 1991: "Russians elect Boris Yeltsin president. Yeltsin suggests a toast to Democracy, wakes up shoeless on a bus eight years later." Or Regan's entry for May 15th, 1718: "A London Lawyer named James Puckle patents the world's first machine gun, because lawyering was not doing enough to crush the soul of mankind." The reader will also learn about the November 11th, 1918 birth of "Armistice Day, which was later changed to Veterans' Day, so that Americans could more easily pronounce what they annually ignored."Full-color photographs, along with amusing sidebars, lists, and mock historical images aid in providing definitive answers to historical curiosities such as, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" or the similarities between music moguls Kevin Federline and Johann Sebastian Bach. Readers will even discover that Alexander G. Bell's famous cry of, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you," during the first telephone conversation was, in fact, the invention of the Booty Call.
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