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Book Review of Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History

Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History
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The truth and nothing but the truth-Richard Shenkman sheds light on America's most believed legends. *The story that Columbus discovered that 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 in love with his best friend's wife. *Independence wasn't declared on July 4 (and the Liberty Bell was so little regarded that Philadelphia tried to sell it for scrap metal but nobody wanted it). *There's no evidence that anyone died in a frontier shootout at high noon. *After World War II, the U.S. Government concluded that Japan would have surrendered within months, even if we had not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.