Customer Reviews

Good, Bad, & Mad - Some Weird People In American History

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Floyd gives short biographies of 38 interesting people. As he states in his introduction, he selected out of his own criteria. The author seems fascinated with science fiction writers, and believers in the continent of Atlantis. There were at least three each of those people. Other than that, Floyd selects the usual selection of interesting people in American life such as Custer, Pillow,and Chivington.

This is an OK read. I learned about some interesting people. However, there is not a lot of meat in this book. It is a quick light read.

This book does not read like history. But of course it wasn't written by a historian but a newspaper reporter. The brief bios of the folks in Floyd's bood are interesting enough, but it is a "fluff" read...there is no substance. Though Floyd may consider the people he wrote about "weird" most aren't any more than you or I. When you do find an interesting quote, Floyd doesn't bother to give us an endnote or footnote to let the reader know where the quote came from. Furthermore, most of what you find in the book is pretty much American legend or assumed fact without any real research to back it up.

The author of this book lectures at Augusta State University, in Georgia, and the tone and structure of a historian often become apparent within this book.
Every short chapter in "The Good, the Bad, and the Mad: Some Weird People in American History" deals with a different figure in America's past. Many of the characters are people everyone has heard of and that really don't seem that weird. Others are weird but are used more as devices to talk about a weird subject such as a house full of staircases that lead nowhere, or the wilder revivals of the early West.
The chapters, like essays in a historical review, often start with summaries of everything that's going to be in that chapter, and then go on to tell the stories. Some of the chapters feel like four summaries of the same information in a row. Most end with the character dying.
The characters seem arbitrarily selected, with a disproportionate amount of fantasy authors and people who believe in lost continents. The Western half of the country is notably underrepresented, as are any Spanish colonizers (many of who were very weird), and as are very many people before the nineteenth century.
The chapters could have been placed in a more sensible order--for instance chronologically--but instead jump around from nearly modern day to Cotton Mather to the early-1900s to an Indian chief.
The book's ending is abrupt, without any sort of an afterword, and the entire thing feels fluffy and forgetable. In fact, leafing through it now, on the same day I finished reading it, I can't match stories to all of the names in the table of contents.
The book also lacks any sort of notes, index, or bibliography, and seems to turn a lot of fascinating stories into slight little anecdotes.
All that said, I basically enjoyed this book, though it left me feeling a little ripped off. Some of the characters it introduced to me made me want to read more about them elsewhere, and the author does have a knack for finding very amusing quotes.
I liked this book. I'll keep it. But I wish it were better--more complete, indexed, with longer chapters, a wider cast of characters, and the guts to decide if it was something academic or something to be read on an airplane.

If you like to learn about the other side of those people who have shaped our history you will love this book.Many of the people you read about here are also in our history books,but this tells about the eccentricities of these individuals that history has tried to cover up.I was a big fan of "IN SEARCH OF "as a kid,and now I like "SIGHTINGS".If you can relate to what I'm saying,this will be the type of book that will keep your interest.The stories are short and sweet,enough to feel like you get to know a good deal about these people without drawing out the story like some of the biography's do.Great for someone like me with a short attention span!!I came away feeling like it was the wierdness of the people that led them to take the chances in their lives that took them to greatness.