This was really interesting. A female pirate that was as bloody as they come, the other Midnight Rider besides Paul Revere, the Hanging Judge. and the Mother of Mother's Day and more. Short bios on people who did change or contribute to history but have not been glorified.

Written with research but tinted with a little tongue-in-cheek perspective, giving you another lesson in history. ( )

A light read, with a few pages on more or less obscure Americans. (Some, like Anne Bonny and Hettie Green, are fairly well known to anyone who even skims U.S. History; others (Tom Quick, John Ledyard, and Tunis Campbell) are genuinely forgotten by most people, and even many historians.) A bibliography is offered for those who are still curious about people once famous, who have been left out of most accounts of their times. Recommended despite a very confusing cover. ( )

A book of bios on Americans who did amazing, terrible or revolutionary things, yet have sunk into obscurity.
Being a fan of pirate history, I knew a lot about Anne Bonny, who really isn't obscure in those books, and I'd read of the famous miser Hetty Green and the Quaker preacher Mary Dyer, but most of these people were new to me. And it's probably no surprise that many are women, like Sarah Winnemucca, who confronted President Hayes about the treatment of her Paiute tribe or Louise Boyd, who financed her own explorations in the Arctic and whose knowledge and mapping of Greenland was put to use by the U.S. during WWII.
Others are William Dawes, the other Midnight Rider with Paul Revere, and Stephen Pleasonton, a clerk who used his own initiative to save the Constitution from destruction when the British burned the original White House.
Good research and good choices of Americans we really should be familiar with. ( )

A book of people forgotten by American history. They are diverse, colorful and once famous. The book covers the time from the first colonization to almost the present day. Each biography is short and to the point. The bibliography is good and covers all those written about.