Four star review, originally posted here on March 29th, 2024.
This is easily the nerdiest thing I have ever read, and I am 100% here for it!!!
I love history, I love Alexandra Petri, and I loved doing goofy humor-based projects in high school. So this was right up my alley. I was surprised, though, and readers should be warned, that history is only half of this book. The other half is American literature. So if you’re well-versed in America history but not-so-much in American literature, then you will hate half of this book. I’m wondering if Petri pitched these are two separate book ideas, but the publishers said they weren’t strong enough concepts on their own and had to be combined. Or, more likely, there just wasn’t enough material to scrape together an entire history book, and the literature stuff was just thrown in as filler. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if Petri already had all the literature stuff laying around already, sitting in a drawer of all her high school homework assignments. Regardless of when or how this history/literature book came together, it’s good stuff!
There are a LOT of “documents” in here. By my count (they aren’t numbered, at least not in the audiobook) it’s roughly 85 separate chapters. That’s over 80 separate concepts for jokes! That’s a lot! Which means, of course, that just like Petri’s regular WashPo columns, or the essays in her previous books, some of these chapters are much stronger or weaker than others. On top of that, for most of these chapters the reader needs to already have at least a basic understanding of the material being discussed (not just the historic event, but also the modern reference being juxtaposed with the historic event) in order to fully get the joke. the chance of every chapter hitting for every reader is virtually nonexistent. I personally just skipped a couple of the literary chapters if I hadn’t read the book in questions (but, thankfully, and to my surprise, I’d actually read most of them.) On the flip side, a ton of these chapters definitely hit for me. The only thing that kept me from giving 5 stars was there were just a few too many chapters where I thought the joke was bit too thin, especially once we hit the late 20th century.
Meanwhile, I was roaring at other chapters. Some favorites:
Columbian Exchange Returns
John and Abigail Adams Try Sexting (I was walking my dog listening to this one and absolutely lost it on the sidewalk at one part, which made me look like a crazy person)
The Composing of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” c. 1778
Seneca Falls for You
Edgar Allan Poe’s Handyman
How to Pose for You Civil War Photograph
But Other Than That How Was the Play? Feedback for Our American Cousin
D-Day: A Very Special Sesame Street Episode (this was was so dark, but so good)
The Lady in the Sexual Harassment Seminar, by Raymond Chandler
1950s Recipes
The Night They Came Up with All the Currency
The Team at Build-a-Bear Responds on the Thirteenth Anniversary of 9/11
Helga without the H 