Fiction Book Reviews

Book Review: Mass Historia

By Sandy Amazeen Nov 6, 2008, 0:46 GMT

You can\'t change the past, but with Mass Historia, Chris Regan has done a very fine job of making fun of it." --Stephen ColbertThe History Channel meets Comedy Central in this sidesplitting, quasi-historical almanac by Chris Regan, a five time Emmy award winning comedy writer and one of the coauthors of Jon Stewart\'s bestselling America (The Book).Regan flips through our nation\'s historical calendar to offer up unknown, unrepentant, and often-unbelievable ...more

Emmy award winning comedy writer Chris Regan has turned his considerable talents to past events and come out with a winner in this uproarious look at 365 days in history. Embellishing facts with liberal doses of light humor, history has never been more entertaining as demonstrated by the January 4 entry celebrating Utah’s statehood that explains how Utah became the forty-fifth state which coincidentally, was the average number of wives enjoyed by most Utah men at the time. Then learn about the army suppression of an uprising of a hoard of Donnie Osmond groupies and the five top Mormon fun facts.

Even better, on June 24, 1997 the U.S. Air Force released their final report on the Roswell incident, a 231-page tome that would prove to be light reading for those who can polish off 251 pages of a Dune novel while awaiting a Star Trek rerun. Or how about the November 15, 1887 entry highlighting the birth of Georgia O’Keeffe with the notation, “After being born, the baby looks up at where she came from, and gets her first-and last-idea for a painting.”

Chock full of fun “facts”, sidebars and irreverently captioned pictures, this is not history as we learned it in school, thank goodness! Regan’s view of history is smart, pointed, frequently not PC but always entertaining. Think History Channel crossed with equal portions South Park and Robot Chicken and you get the general idea.