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Book Review of A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History

hardtack avatar reviewed on + 2569 more book reviews


One of my favorite reading interests in of little known facts or people in history. As such, this book held my interest.

However, like many books on people from different times in history, you have to approach each story with caution. For few people are as knowledgeable in numerous different periods of history as they would like to think. As a result, I read the stories with interest, but reserve my belief in the stories until I can confirm them elsewhere.

Usually, in this type of book, the people are real and did, in fact, do much of what is related. But the author has to fill many pages and you wonder if they take license with that person's exploits, as I have seen them do in other books.

In this book, the only mistake obviously evident to me was the author referring twice to General William Rosecrans, an American Civil war general, as William "Rosencrans." All it would have taken was a 2-minute trip to Wikipedia to check out the correct spelling of his name. When an author makes a mistake like that, you have to wonder if he or anyone else checked his work in the rest of the book.

On the plus side, I met numerous new personalities in American history I was unaware of.