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Sep. 3rd, 2008 09:30 amThe one bad thing about being at D*C: I didn't get a chance to log the BEST BOOK EVER when I finished reading it last week. (Many of you, however, already know about it, because I waved it in your faces and expounded gleefully about how it was in fact the BEST BOOK EVER.) George Pendle's The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President fills me with glee in only the way that supreme historical dorkery can.
(Why, yes, that is Millard Fillmore riding a unicorn on the front cover.)
I can't talk reasonably about this book, I can only wave my arms around and cackle. He adopts Edgar Allen Poe as his ward while 'rescuing' him from a suicide attempt! And then he and Edgar Allen and Andrew Jackson go drinking! And then fight a duel! And he fights another duel in Paris in a hot-air balloon, except he doesn't realize it's a duel, he thinks it's a sight-seeing tour, and then the watching Frenchmen make jokes about the utter ennui of life! And he switches places with the Pope for a day, and he finds the source of the Nile, and dresses in drag as Mary Todd Lincoln on the night that Lincoln is shot! And he dedicates his life to fighting the MENACE OF THE FREEMASONS and there is a CLIMACTIC BATTLE! Allcaps are required! And the jokes reference everything from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to Sweeney Agonistes (the poem, alas, not the LJ-er) to Thomas the Tank Engine. Also, helpfully, at the end the author provides a useful table of Things That Are Actually True, without which I might never have learned about Andrew Jackson's wife's bigamy and Millard Fillmore's pirate ancestry. My only complaint: in the text, he never actually rides a unicorn. So the cover is sort of false advertising. BUT IT IS STILL GENIUS.
(Why, yes, that is Millard Fillmore riding a unicorn on the front cover.)
I can't talk reasonably about this book, I can only wave my arms around and cackle. He adopts Edgar Allen Poe as his ward while 'rescuing' him from a suicide attempt! And then he and Edgar Allen and Andrew Jackson go drinking! And then fight a duel! And he fights another duel in Paris in a hot-air balloon, except he doesn't realize it's a duel, he thinks it's a sight-seeing tour, and then the watching Frenchmen make jokes about the utter ennui of life! And he switches places with the Pope for a day, and he finds the source of the Nile, and dresses in drag as Mary Todd Lincoln on the night that Lincoln is shot! And he dedicates his life to fighting the MENACE OF THE FREEMASONS and there is a CLIMACTIC BATTLE! Allcaps are required! And the jokes reference everything from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to Sweeney Agonistes (the poem, alas, not the LJ-er) to Thomas the Tank Engine. Also, helpfully, at the end the author provides a useful table of Things That Are Actually True, without which I might never have learned about Andrew Jackson's wife's bigamy and Millard Fillmore's pirate ancestry. My only complaint: in the text, he never actually rides a unicorn. So the cover is sort of false advertising. BUT IT IS STILL GENIUS.
