Barry - Dave Barry slept here: a sort of history of the United States

WE THE PEOPLE. These are the words that begin the Declaration of Independence. Or maybe we are thinking of the Gettysburg Address. No matter. The point is, these words are written on an extremely historic yellowed document that we, as a nation, keep in a special vault in Washington, D.C., where, each working day, it is cherished by employees of the Document Cherishing Division of the Federal Bureau of Historic Yellowed Objects.

And with good reason. For these three words remind us that we live in a nation that was built by human beings. It is easy to forget this, especially when we are riding in the coach section of a commercial aircraft, sitting on seats apparently built by and for alien beings who are fourteen inches tall and capable of ingesting airline omelets manufactured during the Korean War (19491953). At times like this, it is important that we look back at the people and the events that got us to where we are today, for, in the words of a very wise dead person, A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

And that was the main reason why we wrote this book, aside from wanting to become so wealthy that we shall routinely leave motor yachts as tips. Tragically, many Americans know very little about the history of their own country. We constantly see surveys that reveal this ignorance, especially among our high school students, 78 percent of whom, in a recent nationwide multiple-choice test, identified Abraham Lincoln as a kind of lobster. Thats right: more than three quarters of our nations youth could not correctly identify the man who invented the telephone.

What is the cause of this alarming situation? Partly, of course, it is that our young people are stupid. Young people have always been stupid, dating back to when you were a young person (19711973) and you drank an entire quart of Midnight Surprise Fruit Wine and Dessert Topping and threw up in your best friends fathers elaborate saltwater aquarium containing $6,500 worth of rare and, as it turned out, extremely delicate fish. (You thought we didnt know about that? We know everything. We are a history book.)

But another major part of the problem is the system used to teach history in our schools, a system known technically, among professional educators, as the Boring Method. You were probably taught via this method, which features textbooks that drone on eternally as follows:

EARLY EXPLORATIONS

The region was first explored by the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Rigeur (15341579), who in 1541 was commissioned by King Charles Chuck IV of England (15121583) under the terms of the Treaty of Weems (1544) as authorized by Pope Bilious XIV (15111598) to end the Nine Years, Three Months, and the Better Part of a Week War (May 4, 1534August 8, 1543, at about 1:30 P.M. ), under which Prance (1243present) would cede an area north of the 17th parallel, west of the 163rd longitude, and convenient to shopping to England in exchange for those lands originally conquered by Denmark during the Reign of Large Unattractive Feathered Hats (13871396) and subsequently granted to Italy under the Treaty of

And so on. Little wonder that our young people choose to ignore their nations history and instead focus their intellectual energies on procuring designer clothing. Not that you, the reader, should feel superior. You are probably not such a history Which is why it is a darned good thing for all concerned that this book has been published. Because this book does not waste the readers valuable brain cells with such trivial details as when various events actually occurred. Oh, sure, it contains many exact datesit is, after all, a history bookbut you will notice that we have tried to make these dates as easy as possible to remember by making them all start with October 8, as in October 8, 1729, or October 8, 1953. We chose this particular date after carefully weighing a number of important historical criteria, such as (a) it is our sons birthday.

In our view, the one-date system of history has the same advantages, in terms of simplifying things, as the metric system of measurement, which has taken this country by storm, and we look forward to the day when history textbooks carry this system even further and contain only one year, so that a child will be able to get all the way through the secondary educational system without ever having to grasp any concept other than October 8, 1947.Take, for example, the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraska. The hell with the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraskathat is our motto. This philosophy left us with plenty of extra room, which enabled us to provide you, the reader, with large, restful expanses of white space, as well as numerous riveting behind-the-scenes historical anecdotes that you will not find in a normal history book because we made them up.