How one man corrected hundreds of modern misquotations infecting the Internet, our books, and our minds.
Everywhere you look, you’ll find viral quotable wisdom attributed to icons ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain, from Cicero to Woody Allen. But more often than not, these attributions are false.
Garson O’Toole—the Internet’s foremost investigator into the dubious origins of our most repeated quotations, aphorisms, and everyday sayings—collects his efforts into a first-ever encyclopedia of corrective popular history. Containing an enormous amount of original research, this delightful compendium presents information previously unavailable to readers, writers, and scholars. It also serves as the first careful examination of what causes misquotations and how they spread across the globe.
Using the massive expansion in online databases as well as old-fashioned gumshoe archival digging, O’Toole provides a fascinating study of our modern abilities to find and correct misinformation. As Carl Sagan did not say, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
A good history of mis-quotations A well researched collection of famous quotations explaining the history of how they ended up being misquoted. A fun and easy read for those who enjoy literary trivia.
“I didn’t say half the things I said”- Yogi Berra “There’s a lot of misquotation out there,” as Albert Einstein said.
Great Kindle First selection… informative and entertaining Rarely do I see a non-fiction book as a Kindle First selection, even more rarely is it one that actually looks interesting to me. I usually go for the Mystery/Suspense/Thrillers but I switched it up this month. Everyone loves a good, thought-provoking quote, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has filled notebooks with some of their favorites. Between quotes and lyrics I must have filled up dozens of composition books in my youth. I found some cleaning recently and it’s really revealing to go…