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A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing

Cooper & Mansbach team with some of today’s most talented writers to vitalize American history.

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What people are saying…

“This is a ‘people’s history’ with tongue in cheek: delightfully funny, imaginative, but with a subtle undertone of seriousness. I enjoyed it immensely.”
—Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“Cooper’s and Mansbach’s thesis is noble and intellectually rigorous: that ‘the hegemonic single-narrative of mainstream American history’ is essentially fiction in itself.”
—Publishers Weekly

“History may be written by the victors, but neither the official story nor the corrupted sorts who foist it upon us can vanquish the truth—especially the truth produced by lying of the artful and big-hearted variety. Hooray for this hilarious and pointed fictional history! Hooray for the missing chunks, too!”
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

“This is the only essential anthology to come along in the 21st century. Had William Burroughs edited short fiction by Howard Zinn, the result would fit snugly between these covers. Be prepared to experience American history in an entirely new way.”
—Jaime Manrique, author of Our Lives Are the Rivers

Description

Original stories & artwork by: Daniel Alarcon, Amy Bloom, Kate Bornstein, Alexander Chee, T Cooper, Keith Knight, Ron Kovic, Paul La Farge, Felicia Luna Lemus, Adam Mansbach, Valerie Miner, Tommy O’Malley, Neal Pollack, David Rees, Sarah Schulman, Darin Strauss, and Benjamin Weissman.

History is distorted the moment it’s recorded—and in these politically dishonest times, challenging the stories we’re told is more important than ever. In this groundbreaking anthology of original fiction, a diverse group of America’s best writers takes on the task of creating counter-narratives to mainstream American history. Here are some of the moments and the people left out of the textbooks. Here is what else happened—on the margins of American life, and in between the lines of our history books.

A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing brings together an eclectic array of celebrated authors and cartoonists to create a patchwork, anecdotal history of this complicated country. From the Chinese discovery of America in 1426 to the new McCarthyism of a post–9/11 world, this collection recasts everything from the moon landing to the Lindbergh kidnapping, westward expansion to the sexual proclivities of Civil War officers. Riveting, inventive, and politically vital, this anthology picks up—and yanks on—America’s supposed commitment to seeking the truth . . . even if that truth is revealed in fiction.

Table of Contents

Introduction by T Cooper & Adam Mansbach

“The Discovery of America” by Paul La Farge (ca. 2000 BCE–present)
“Wampeshau” by Alexander Chee (1426)
“West” by Benjamin Weissman (1846)
“Dixie Belle: The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Kate Bornstein (1865)
“The Waterbury” by David Rees (1884)
“A True and Faithful Account of Mr. Ota Benga the Pygmy, Written by M. Berman, Zookeeper” by Adam Mansbach (1905)
“April 9, 1924” by Amy Bloom (1924)
“The Story That Refuses to Die” by T Cooper (1932)
“Five and Dime Valentine” by Felicia Luna Lemus (1937)
“One More Old Hat” by Darin Strauss (1946)
“The Courage to Love” by Sarah Schulman (1955)
“The Recruiters” by Ron Kovic (1968)
“The Harlem Globetrotters” by Keith Knight (1971)
“The Ressurection Men” by Thomas O’Malley (1989)
“The New Century” by Neal Pollack (1998)
“Apprehensions” by Valerie Miner (2001)
“The Anodyne Dreams of Various Imbeciles” by Daniel Alarcón (2011)

Book Details

Paperback: 300 pages
Published: 8/1/06
IBSN: 9781933354026
e-IBSN: 9781617752179

Genre: Fiction

Authors

T COOPER and ALLISON GLOCK-COOPER are best-selling and award-winning authors and journalists. Between them, they have published eleven books, raised two children, and rescued six dogs. The Changers series—featuring Changers Book One: Drew, Changers Book Two: Oryon, Changers Book Three: Kim, and Changers Book Four: Forever—is their first collaboration in print. The two also write for television and film, and are currently adapting Changers for television (with Lionsgate). The authors can be reached via their websites: www.t-cooper.com and www.allisonglock.com.

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ADAM MANSBACH is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, as well as the novels The Golem of Brooklyn, Rage Is Back, The End of the Jews, (winner of the California Book Award), and Angry Black White Boy, and the memoir-in-verse I Had a Brother Once. With Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, he coauthored For This We Left Egypt? and the best-selling A Field Guide to the Jewish People. His books for young readers include the New York Times bestseller Just Try One Bite and the award-winning Jake the Fake Series. Cocoa the Tour Dog, coauthored with the band Stick Figure, is his latest book.