Summer Reading for Potus Geeks: Alternate Histories
If you're a history geek, but your tastes tend more to fiction, you might want to consider some alternate history for your summer reading. Let me make a few suggestions for those of you looking for a change of pace from the dry and factual to the imaginative:
1. 36 Hours to Save the President by Alan Trock tells the story of Alex Linwood, a time traveler who travels back in time to April 13, 1865, to take advantage of the unique opportunity to devote the next 36 hours to save Lincoln's life. In Washington, Alex comes face to face with the individuals central to the assassination. If you go to the author's webpage (at the link on the title of the book in this paragraph), you can read the first two chapters of the book. Critics have praised this book's ending for its innovation and creativity. This is a great choice for those of you who like suspense and imagination with your historical fiction.
2. 11/22/63 by Stephen King: Master of suspence and shockers Stephen King takes on another presidential assassination, that of JFK on the book's title date, Its main character is Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, has access to a portal to 1958 and he enlists Jake on a mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. This novel, which has been made into a miniseries, is descired as "Stephen King at his epic best."
3. Alternate Presidents is a collection of 28 short stories edited by Mike Resnick, speculating on what history might have been like if the outcome of 28 presidential elections would have been different. This anthology was released on February 15, 1992. I don't know why I waited so long to read it. (The review of this book can be found here). Resnick, a Hugo Award winning science fiction writer, also contributes one of the stories (about what would have happened if Theodore Roosevelt had won the 1912 election) as does his daughter Laura (who pens one of my favorites in the book, a story told in a series of letters from Queen Victoria, complaining about the effects of a fictional administration and policies of President Victoria Woodhull).
4. The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President is a faux biography of the 13th President, written by George Pendle, in a style reminiscent of the late Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series). Our review of the book can be found here. Pendle's gullible narrator describes the amazing discovery of a heretofore unknown set of Fillmore diaries in which the former president sets about retelling much of his remarkable life story. Though considered by most historians to be a hoax, the narrator is convinced that the diary is real, ascribing the reason that much of it is written in ballpoint pen (an invention which came over 60 years after Fillmore's death) to the fact that Fillmore must have also invented the writing instrument, but was too modest to brag about it. Pendle's Fillmore is a likable and naive dullard, part Baron Munchhausen and part Forest Gump, who turns up unexpectedly at many strange places and times in history. These include a stint as a sumo wrestler in Japan, finding the source of the Nile, dueling Andrew Jackson, tightrope walking across Niagara Falls and being in the President's box at Ford's Theatre on the night of the Lincoln Assassination. He rubs shoulders with the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Nat Turner, Chief Osceola, John Brown, and Dr. Henry Livingstone among many others. Don't look these events up in the history books, you probably won't find them. Pendle also incorporates the real details of Fillmore's life, though likely not precisely as they occurred. This is a hilarious read, and is a nice vacation from dull history tomes.
5. Taft 2012 by Jason Heller (reviewed here) serves up a delightful political satire by combining a history lesson about the 27th President of the United States with a cutting social commentary on the state of modern American politics. Heller's protagonist is William Howard Taft, the nation's most corpulent (300 pound) president, and the last to wear a mustache. But in this alternate version of history, Taft mysteriously disappears on the day of his successor Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, never to he heard from again until a century later, when he mysteriously reappears at the White House. In the midst of spinning this witty yarn, Heller incorporates the world of twitter, cable news, greedy lobbies and other aspects of current culture in a funny, imaginative and thought provoking merger of fantasy and satire that adds up to a very enjoyable novel. Whether you're a political junkie looking for some light fiction or just someone intrigued by the unique premise of this book, this is a witty, fun and brilliant read. Heller proves himself to be a modern day Jonathan Swift, providing a novel that is simultaneously equal parts funny and intelligent.
6. The Bloviator by Jim Yoakum is a good illustration of how truth can not only be stranger than fiction, but can also serve as the backdrop of great fiction. The author uses the last days of President Warren G. Harding as the canvas for his tale. Faced with impending scandals within his administration that were about to explode, corrupt advisors, failing health made worse by a quack of a physician, blackmailers attempting to exploit his numerous affairs, and an ambitious domineering wife, the President of the United States embarked on a cross-country train trip from Washington D.C. to Alaska in an effort to rehabilitate his chances for re-election. That's all the true stuff. Amidst all of this, Yoakum injects a number of fictitious elements to the story, some based on speculation, others that are pure invention. These include a hallucinating (or possibly haunted) president, a first lady attuned to mystics and bent on becoming the first female President of the United States, a scheming and deceitful villainous Attorney-General (well, that's mostly true), and a number of steamy sex scenes one might expect from a lascivious President, but which one might not expect from some of the other characters in Harding's circle of influence. The ending is also something that probably never happened, that's all I'll say about that. Our review of this book can be found here.
So if you're not into long dusty tomes and prefer your history more on the wild side, check out these recommendations for some fun summer reading.
1. 36 Hours to Save the President by Alan Trock tells the story of Alex Linwood, a time traveler who travels back in time to April 13, 1865, to take advantage of the unique opportunity to devote the next 36 hours to save Lincoln's life. In Washington, Alex comes face to face with the individuals central to the assassination. If you go to the author's webpage (at the link on the title of the book in this paragraph), you can read the first two chapters of the book. Critics have praised this book's ending for its innovation and creativity. This is a great choice for those of you who like suspense and imagination with your historical fiction.
2. 11/22/63 by Stephen King: Master of suspence and shockers Stephen King takes on another presidential assassination, that of JFK on the book's title date, Its main character is Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, has access to a portal to 1958 and he enlists Jake on a mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. This novel, which has been made into a miniseries, is descired as "Stephen King at his epic best."
3. Alternate Presidents is a collection of 28 short stories edited by Mike Resnick, speculating on what history might have been like if the outcome of 28 presidential elections would have been different. This anthology was released on February 15, 1992. I don't know why I waited so long to read it. (The review of this book can be found here). Resnick, a Hugo Award winning science fiction writer, also contributes one of the stories (about what would have happened if Theodore Roosevelt had won the 1912 election) as does his daughter Laura (who pens one of my favorites in the book, a story told in a series of letters from Queen Victoria, complaining about the effects of a fictional administration and policies of President Victoria Woodhull).
4. The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President is a faux biography of the 13th President, written by George Pendle, in a style reminiscent of the late Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series). Our review of the book can be found here. Pendle's gullible narrator describes the amazing discovery of a heretofore unknown set of Fillmore diaries in which the former president sets about retelling much of his remarkable life story. Though considered by most historians to be a hoax, the narrator is convinced that the diary is real, ascribing the reason that much of it is written in ballpoint pen (an invention which came over 60 years after Fillmore's death) to the fact that Fillmore must have also invented the writing instrument, but was too modest to brag about it. Pendle's Fillmore is a likable and naive dullard, part Baron Munchhausen and part Forest Gump, who turns up unexpectedly at many strange places and times in history. These include a stint as a sumo wrestler in Japan, finding the source of the Nile, dueling Andrew Jackson, tightrope walking across Niagara Falls and being in the President's box at Ford's Theatre on the night of the Lincoln Assassination. He rubs shoulders with the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Nat Turner, Chief Osceola, John Brown, and Dr. Henry Livingstone among many others. Don't look these events up in the history books, you probably won't find them. Pendle also incorporates the real details of Fillmore's life, though likely not precisely as they occurred. This is a hilarious read, and is a nice vacation from dull history tomes.
5. Taft 2012 by Jason Heller (reviewed here) serves up a delightful political satire by combining a history lesson about the 27th President of the United States with a cutting social commentary on the state of modern American politics. Heller's protagonist is William Howard Taft, the nation's most corpulent (300 pound) president, and the last to wear a mustache. But in this alternate version of history, Taft mysteriously disappears on the day of his successor Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, never to he heard from again until a century later, when he mysteriously reappears at the White House. In the midst of spinning this witty yarn, Heller incorporates the world of twitter, cable news, greedy lobbies and other aspects of current culture in a funny, imaginative and thought provoking merger of fantasy and satire that adds up to a very enjoyable novel. Whether you're a political junkie looking for some light fiction or just someone intrigued by the unique premise of this book, this is a witty, fun and brilliant read. Heller proves himself to be a modern day Jonathan Swift, providing a novel that is simultaneously equal parts funny and intelligent.
6. The Bloviator by Jim Yoakum is a good illustration of how truth can not only be stranger than fiction, but can also serve as the backdrop of great fiction. The author uses the last days of President Warren G. Harding as the canvas for his tale. Faced with impending scandals within his administration that were about to explode, corrupt advisors, failing health made worse by a quack of a physician, blackmailers attempting to exploit his numerous affairs, and an ambitious domineering wife, the President of the United States embarked on a cross-country train trip from Washington D.C. to Alaska in an effort to rehabilitate his chances for re-election. That's all the true stuff. Amidst all of this, Yoakum injects a number of fictitious elements to the story, some based on speculation, others that are pure invention. These include a hallucinating (or possibly haunted) president, a first lady attuned to mystics and bent on becoming the first female President of the United States, a scheming and deceitful villainous Attorney-General (well, that's mostly true), and a number of steamy sex scenes one might expect from a lascivious President, but which one might not expect from some of the other characters in Harding's circle of influence. The ending is also something that probably never happened, that's all I'll say about that. Our review of this book can be found here.
So if you're not into long dusty tomes and prefer your history more on the wild side, check out these recommendations for some fun summer reading.