This has to be the oddest book review solicitation I’ve ever received:
[…] please for your own sake, educate yourself and review Dan Obrien’s How To Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against The Badasses Who Ran This Country (on-sale March 18, 2014).Don’t be fooled: our founding fathers were more bandanas-and-muscles than powdered-wigs-and-tea. Take Andrew Jackson, who, as a prisoner of war, was forced to walk several miles barefoot across state lines, despite the fact that (a) he had smallpox and (b) his head had been recently sliced open when he refused to polish the boots of the soldiers who had taken him captive. Oh, and he was thirteen freaking years old when it happened. Now imagine that this man–and many others just like them–want to kick your ass.
This book gives you a quick rundown of each president’s backstory—Do they have any serious fight training? Are they violently insane?—followed by a best- and worst-case fighting scenario for each president. For example:
· James Buchanan: famously terrified of blood, so challenging him to a handcuffed knife-fight is a clear advantage for you.
· John Q Adams: notoriously adept at swimming, so fighting him in or near a lake puts you at a considerable disadvantage.
· George Washington: once wrote: “I hear the bullets whistle and, believe me, there is something charming to the sound of bullets.” So your best-case scenario would be to run. Run as fast as you can.
Excerpt here if you’re interested.
dr.hypercube
Still the canonical treatment: In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?
Librarian
I’m assuming this guy isn’t a professional historian.
PhoenixRising
Tom, I didn’t know you had time to review books this semester or I’d have asked. Though it would be hard to top the negative review that says ‘The events in this book didn’t happen, and if everyone used a Christian adoption agency, things like this wouldn’t happen’. Um…thanks?
Mr. Prosser
It looks like a comic and the drawing and ink work look pretty good.
Mr. Prosser
It looks like a comic and the drawing and ink work look pretty good.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, then there’s George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, both huge supporters of the glorious adventure in Vietnam who had “other priorities” than actually putting their own precious assess into a rice paddy.
Of course, both of them would have been killed by their own troops had they gone, so there’s that.
Violet
I wish there were a book like this for potential presidential candidates. Think how useful it would be!
ruemara
The same historical accuracy as “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, I warrant.
Amir Khalid
I read the excerpt and found myself wondering, just how weird were President Grant’s balls?
Scott S.
I’m afraid I really, really want this book now.
Violet
@Scott S.: Do we know the title and author?
Cyan
In a fight with Washington, you better run — he’ll kick you apart!
Citizen_X
@PhoenixRising:
I’m nominating this, right now, as the greatest book review ever, or at least of the fantasy-Presidential-combat genre.
askew
That book looks hysterical and would be a great gift.
On an unrelated note, does anyone have suggestions for good twitter handles to follow for foreign policy? I had been following Laura Rozen but she got infected with ODS bad in the past week and her feed became pretty useless.
Southern Beale
In what world are the 7th and 15th Presidents of the US considered “Founding Fathers”? I mean, I’ve never heard of Andrew Jackson referred to as a Founding Father and I fucking live in Tennessee.
Southern Beale
@askew:
Don’t know if it’s what you’re looking for but I follow Al Jazeera America and Al Arabiya.
Librarian
I looked up the book on Amazon, and the author is apparently a writer for Cracked.com, so, while he’s not a historian, he’s also not a right wing hack as I was afraid of.
Tommy
@Southern Beale: I have the Al Jazeera America app on my phone and tablet. Now I am a creature of habit, so I tend to head to the same news sources I trust. New bookmarks rarely get added. But I find myself going to Al Jazeera America more and more often. IMHO a really quality news organization. Plus, hey it is free :).
Violet
@Violet: Okay, apparently I’m completely blind and the title and author are there in the quoted bit. That’ll teach me to post before coffee.
Ben Cisco
Traffic-related WTF of the day: How hate-filled do you have to be to purchase a personalized plate reading FTHELEFT – just in case it wasn’t obvious ENOUGH that you’re a massive dbag?
Bobby Thomson
@dr.hypercube: But containing obvious inaccuracies:
Please. Reagan’s eyes kept him from serving overseas and he spent WWII making propaganda movies and selling war bonds.
And the Bushes are rated way too high. Poppy was already too old for that shit by the time he became president, and don’t get me started on Junior.
Amir Khalid
@Librarian:
I knew there was something familiar about the tone of the writing.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Agreed on pere Bush but a coked up and drunk W is not somebody I would have wanted to have to take on in a fight.
burnspbesq
Appearance of Impropriety, meet New Drug Approval.
http://www.samefacts.com/2014/03/drug-policy/waiting-for-zohydro/
Naw, nothing bad could possibly come of this.
Cervantes
@dr.hypercube: I had not seen it before. The addendum is good, too:
Anyhow, thanks!
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: On the way over, if not before.
debbie
@Librarian:
Sounds like one of Glenn Beck’s minions.
Woodrowfan
I so want this book. I wonder if I could adopt it for a class??
JoyfulA
@Southern Beale: I had the same doubt about Andrew Jackson and looked him up on Wikipedia. Of course, he was not in a powdered wig at Independence Hall, but he did fight in a militia in the Revolutionary War at a young age and was captured and imprisoned by the Brits. In fact, the facts of this book seem to be the facts from Wikipedia, including the scars and smallpox.
askew
@Southern Beale:
Excellent recommendations. Thanks.
Bobby Thomson
@CONGRATULATIONS!: But you forgot
Polanda key proviso – each president fights at their physical peak while president. I don’t doubt Junior was still hitting the bottle in the White House, especially in the days after 9/11, but I suspect he quit blow.ETA: the commenters on that piece do an injustice to Lincoln. According to the autopsy report he was still an incredible physical specimen when he was assassinated.
The Other Chuck
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I’m assuming the fight would be with said president in his prime: Pappy Bush was probably in pretty good shape when he was flying combat: those planes weren’t exactly fly-by-wire back then. Even a middle-aged Bush would have the crafty dirty tricks of a spook.
Shrub would just have Cheney hold your family hostage til you threw the fight.
WaterGirl
@burnspbesq: Are we sure that’s not the onion?
Steve in the ATL
Thank you, imaginary internet friends, for the many references in this thread to “a historian” rather than “an historian.” My day is now better.
As I once heard it explained, “Do you live in ‘an house’?”
debbie
@Southern Beale:
Not to sound like a broken record, but Glenn Beck has called Jackson a
Founding Father. He calls every President he likes a Founding Father.
burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
Yes, we are. Unfortunately.
patrick II
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Unless you were Vietnamese, in which case he would have run away.
Aunt Kathy
Looks like a spinoff from this book, by a different author (but is also someone who writes for Crackd).
http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Relentless-Onslaught-Gunfighters-Commanders/dp/0061749443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395185686&sr=8-1&keywords=badass