The Remarkable Millard Fillmore
The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Millard Fillmore has been mocked, maligned, or, most cruelly of all, ignored by generations of historians--but no more! This unbelievable new biography finally rescues the unlucky thirteenth U.S. president from the dustbin of history and shows why a man known as a blundering, arrogant, shallow, miserable failure was really our greatest leader.
In the first fully researched portrait of Fillmore ever written, the reader can finally come face-to-face with a misunderstood genius. By meticulously extrapolating outrageous conclusions from the most banal and inconclusive of facts, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore reveals the adventures of an unjustly forgotten president. He fought at the Battle of the Alamo! He shepherded slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad! He discovered gold in California! He wrestled with the emperor of Japan! It is a list of achievements that puts those of Washington and Lincoln completely in the shade.
Refusing to be held back by established history or recorded fact, here George Pendle paints an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary man and restores the sparkle to an unfairly tarnished reputation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
America's 13th president has often been the subject of humor, and this bogus biography by Pendle (Strange Angels: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons) is no exception. Fillmore was not a "blundering, pompous, ultimately shallow failure," claims Pendle. Instead, we learn that the multitalented Fillmore had a rich and varied life, at once heroic, artistic and full of intellectual vigor. He saved a woman from a shark attack and received good reviews for his minstrel show performance: "he had the audience guffawing mightily." A prolific inventor, he never received proper credit for vulcanizing rubber or designing the cooling "Tea-shirt." Like Woody Allen's Zelig, Fillmore had a knack for always being present at major historical events, where he usually emerged triumphant (as when he prevented the assassination of Andrew Jackson and survived the Battle of the Alamo. Using previously unknown sources, Pendle has achieved his goal "to redeem the reputation of a forgotten giant," and he also succeeds in amusing readers by mixing the historical and the hysterical. 40 b&w illus.
