Description:

Amazon.com Review

Dave runs American history through the wringer, and comes up with some wonderfully warped formulations. (The Vikings, for example, "were extremely rugged individuals whose idea of a fun time was to sail over and set fire to England, which in those days was fairly easy to ignite because it had a very high level of thatch, this being the kind of roof favored by the local tribespeople...") Covering pre-Columbian days through the dawn of the Bush administration, Dave Barry Slept Here is the funniest thing to hit this great nation since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.

From Publishers Weekly

Miami Herald syndicated columnist Barry here assembles a funny U.S. history replete with malapropisms (Ferdinard and Imelda of Spain financed Columbus), parodies ("This land is your land, / This land is my land, / Looks like one of us / Has a forged deed to the land."), literal-mindedness (President Monroe Doctrine) and, above all, anachronisms (the Wrights' first flight was canceled because of equipment problems at O'Hare). Several clever gags run through the book--one about the significant contributions of women and minorities (although none is ever detailed), another ascribing the date of every major event to October 8 (for ease in remembering) and a third featuring the Hawley-Smoot tariff, which had an immediate impact on the Great Depression. There are few heroes in Barry's pantheon, and only an occasional villain--principally Richard Nixon--while other widely admired figures, like Mark Twain and Winston Churchill, are given their lumps. Author tour.
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