Published in 2023
352 pages
6 hours and 56 minutes
Alexandra Petri is a humorist and columnist for the Washington Post and author of three books including Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, a Thurber Prize finalist. She lives in Washington, DC.
What is this book about?
A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Alexandra Petri’s US History is the fake textbook you never knew you needed
Alexandra Petri’s US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren G. Harding.) Petri’s “historical fan fiction” draws on real events and completely absurd fabrications to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation’s complicated past.
On Petri’s deranged timeline, John and Abigail Adams try sexting, the March sisters from Little Women are sixty feet tall, and Susan Sontag goes to summer camp. Nearly eighty short, hilarious pieces span centuries of American history and culture. Nikola Tesla’s friends stage an intervention when he falls in love with a pigeon. The characters from Sesame Street invade Normandy. And Mark Twain—who famously said reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated—offers a detailed account of his undeath, in which he becomes a zombie.
This side-splitting work of historical humor shows why Alexandra Petri has been hailed as a “genius,” a “national treasure,” and “one of the funniest writers alive.”
