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Author
Summary
The truth and nothing but the truth-Richard Shenkman sheds light on America's most believed legends.
The story of Columbus discovering the world was round was invented by Washington Irving.
The pilgrims never lived in log cabins.
In Concord, Massachusetts, a third of all babies born in the twenty years before the Revolution were conceived out of wedlock.
Washington may have never told a lie, but he loved to drink and dance, and he fell...
Author
Series
Summary
This book is a compilation of "urban legends," popular fables that describe presumably real events that happened to a friend of a friend, selected from a broad range of sources, including oral tradition, written versions, newspapers, literature, folklore studies, and the information superhighway.
Author
Series
Summary
"America isn't old when compared to other countries, but it has its fair share of odd myths and legends. From the myths of Pecos Bill to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, our history has quirks and stories spanning all 50 states in the union. Readers explore the dark depths of storytelling in this exciting book filled with high-interest tales of American legends. Full-color photographs and freaky graphics help tell the tales that terrified or just plain...
Series
Summary
Witness the birth of Tenacious D, the self-proclaimed greatest rock band of all time. On a fateful day on Venice beach, JB and KG meet and realize that they were destined to make history by combining their musical genius. But when overnight success eludes them, they set out to find the legendary "Pick of Destiny" - a special guitar pick believed to possess magical powers that can turn any open-mike wannabe into a rock legend.
Summary
Named by the Library of Congress in a 2012 exhibit as among the top "100 Books that Shaped America," this two-volume set contains 500 stories and 100 songs collected from the author's time as national folklore editor for the Federal Writer's Project (1938-39) as well as his work as archivist of folksongs at the Library of Congress. As Carl Sandburg writes in his foreword, "So here we have nothing less than an encyclopedia of the folklore of America....
Author
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"Why did Elizabethan adventurers believe that the interior of America hid vast caches of gold? Who started the rumor that British officers purchased revolutionary white women's scalps, packed them by the bale, and shipped them to their superiors? And why are people today still convinced that white settlers--hardly immune as a group to the disease--routinely distributed smallpox-tainted blankets to the natives? Rumor--spread by colonists and Native...