Publishers Weekly
02/13/2023
“If you’re going to instruct all the educators in America to teach history that did not happen.... Why not commit to the principle of the thing and insert all the bizarre documents that you think ought to be there?” asks Washington Post humor columnist Petri (Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why) in this absurdist collection. From Aaron Sorkin’s version of the Gettysburg Address (“Walk with me over this battlefield, Stacy”) to John and Abigail Adams’s frustrated attempt at sexting via transatlantic letter (“I am removing my thick woolen greatcoat of sound construction”), Petri leaves few milestones of U.S. culture and politics un-lampooned. There’s also the original draft of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” as it was dictated to him by a dog (“Human! I’m with you on sofa/ Where you’re muddier than I am”), and a version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in which Hunter Thompson forgets to bring the drugs (“ ‘Maybe we should see Debbie Reynolds,’ my attorney suggested”). Though the satire is more eccentric than biting, Petri pricks the egos of many legendary men, noting, for instance, that Henry David Thoreau’s mother brought his laundry to him at Walden Pond. Rooted in Petri’s impressive knowledge of the American past, this is a trip. (Apr.)
Amy Fusselman
"[B]rilliantly bananas.... Petri’s latest book demonstrates primarily two things: One, she is a genius; and two, no, she really is.... [S]atire at the highest level. …[A] godsend of a book."
BookPage - Amy Scribner
"Dazzling…Petri's seemingly effortless ability to reimagine American history in the most bizarre ways makes this one of the most entertaining books you'll read this year…It's a satirical salve at a time when we need humor more than ever."
Alexis Coe
"Alexandra Petri’s deranged take on American history captures the spirit of the nation’s past so well, I’m afraid it’s going to be banned in Florida."
Booklist (starred review) - Kathleen McBroom
"Some [of Petri’s] selections are wry, some preposterous, some laugh-out-loud funny; all are inventive…This intriguing collection will definitely keep audiences entertained, whether they read through cover to cover or dip in for the occasional treat."
Daniel Lavery
"A charming, brisk galumph through history. I enjoyed it immensely, as I always do with Alexandra Petri’s ricochet reactions to the historical process."
Randall Munroe
"I can safely say I will never look at Sesame Street, Emily Dickinson, or John and Abigail Adams’s marriage the same way again."
Annette Gordon-Reed
"Alexandra Petri’s marvelously inventive, wickedly funny, and extremely astute take on US history is exactly what we need as we ponder the future of the American Experiment and begin to prepare for the country’s 250th anniversary."
Guardian - Matthew Cantor
"Petri’s writing is consistently witty and erudite without the slightest hint of pretentiousness.… If you can make the 19th-century debate over monetary policy funny, you’re clearly on to something."
Kirkus Reviews
2023-01-12
Washington Posthumor writer Petri attempts a funny spin on history.
The author opens by channeling the previous occupant of the White House, proclaiming that since history is written by the winners, she, though “not a historian, or a scholar” is now “something much more important: a winner.” She continues with a series of imagined, counterfactual episodes—e.g., an Indigenous person objecting to the terms of the so-called Columbian exchange, displeased about providing potatoes on one hand in exchange for disease on the other (“Typhus took generations to perfect,” the European says); or a New Yorker who misreads the words Erie Canal as an instigation for a more vigorous horror literature of the sort that Edgar Allan Poe will soon be cranking out. Some of the pieces work: Petri does a nice job mangling F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby by inserting Hemingway-esque declarations into its famous closing, and she effectively dumbs down Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which probably didn’t need the simplification, to have Guy Montag explain that what makes a book dangerous is the ideas it contains (“It’s, like, a metaphor”). Also entertaining: an exchange in which Frank Lloyd Wright defends his leaky, short roofs by explaining that they’re keyed to his height, which is “the perfect height for a human being”; and Rodgers and Hammerstein arguing over whether, having put an exclamation point on Oklahoma! their other works might benefit from the same treatment (re: South Pacific, “It’s a geographical location. It doesn’t need pizzazz”). Petri’s disquisitions on the shooting of John Lennon, a drugless Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the U.S. presidents in Ragnarok are duds. Much of the book, studded with fun moments, lacks the sustained wit and goofiness of the British humor classic 1066 and All That.
A sporadically humorous take on the American past, which is all too seldom a laughing matter.
