Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pretty entertaining, and I'm a sucker for historical misconceptions, but there are a few glaring problems with this book. First, a couple of tales that he presents as "fact" are misleading. For example, an early tale in the book states that Lizzie Borden, famous axe murderer, was actually unanimously found innocent by the jury, implying that the famous rhyme about her is just a historical misconception. However, there is a big difference between a "not guilty" verdict and actual innocence. It is widely believed that her defense attorney was able to manipulate the sexist views held by jurors of the time (1893) to play into their view that there was no possible way this sweet young woman could have committed the crime. The judge also excluded her unsuccessful attempt to purchase cyanide shortly before the murders, and her entire original inquest testimony. At the time of her arrest, police noted that she was eerily calm and did not seem to exhibit any shock or sadness at the brutally axe-murdered bodies of her parents. In short, at best Borden's guilt is questionable, and it's certainly interesting that a jury found her innocent, but to present that verdict as a "look, she was actually innocent" tale is such an incomplete picture that it's dishonest. Second, another of his supposed "facts" is in reality just a conservative rant about the Constitution disguised as fact. He states that there is no separation of church and state because that specific phrase does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, gives his own opinion on the policy justification for the establishment clause, then states that "no one, not even the courts, takes the time to read it." Yeah, okay. Clearly the members of the Supreme Court analyze and interpret the Constitution without even bothering to read what it is they are interpreting and Leland, a comedy writer, understands the Constitution better than they do. He's not a lawyer, he doesn't understand constitutional law, and he needs to knock it off with the backseat lawyering. The question of how far the language "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" should go is a thorny and controversial one, but no matter what your view, you can't just take your viewpoint (in his case, a strict constructionist one) and state it as fact. Aside from that, through the interpretation of the Supreme Court, the Constitution gives a whole lot of rights that are not explicitly stated, and in all likelihood were not contemplated by the founders. That whole "implied rights" thing, like the right to privacy, which came out of Griswold v. Connecticut and served as the basis for Lawrence v. Texas and Roe v. Wade. Whether you agree with them or not, under current US law, the Constitution does in fact provide us with these implied rights, even though the Constitution doesn't explicitly set them out. Third, he doesn't cite authority. For anything. Considering his track record with the above tales, and the fact that he retold well-known urban legend 911 calls as actual 911 calls in some of his other books, I don't really trust all of his unsourced and unlikely stories as fact. Despite all this, it's an entertaining book, and the majority of it may be true, hence the 2 stars rather than 1. I would just recommend taking the tales with a grain of salt unless you have the time to think about and verify them with your own research.