History for Dummies – The troubling popularity of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. By David Greenberg: “Several weeks ago, a history book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, by Thomas E. Woods Jr., a hitherto unknown assistant professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York, appeared on the New York Times paperback best-seller chart. User-friendly in its layout, the book is chock-full of pull-quotes, subheads, bulleted lists, short sentences, and two- and three-sentence paragraphs. It presents a brisk tour of U.S. history from Colonial to Clintonian times, filtered through a lens of far-right dogma, circa 1939. It’s History for Dummies meets John T. Flynn. It’s published, naturally, by Regnery.
Lots of other folks have bashed on this book. However, I’m not going to bash on the book, but on Woods. And Suffolk County Community College– or as we called it when I lived out there, the 13th grade.
There are those who said that Suffolk was actually hard to get into. Well, that might have been true once– but not since they put the traffic light on Nicholls in, now you can make that left turn with no problems. As an institute of higher learning, it appeals to those without much cash or ambition, and it leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Woods has his own problems. I refer you all to the works of Professor Eric Muller (particularly on Woods and the League of the South) and Ed Cone. And I’ll bet cash that sooner or later, Bill Maher will have a trademark infringement suit pending.