Best Lines from American Pageant

<p>Now that APs and SAT 2s are done, I thought I’d celebrate by publicizing all the fun American Pageant has given me this past year. To its credit, AP tries to be interesting…but horrible writing sometimes gets in its way. Below I have compiled a list of the lines that kept me awake during long hours of study, rolling in laughter during study hall, and (occasionally) dumb-stuck with disbelief. To the lines, to the laughter, to the American Pageant! </p>

<p>(Feel free to add your own awesome lines.)</p>

<p>(About Hemingway) “A troubled soul, he finally blew his brains out with a shotgun blast in 1961.” (p 766)</p>

<p>(About the Hitler-Stalin pact) “It was plain as the mustache on Stalin’s face that the wily Soviet dictatorwas plotting to turn his German accomplice against the Western democracies.” (p 832)</p>

<p>(About Teddy Roosevelt) “…he loved people and mingled with those of all ranks, from Catholic cardinals to professional prizefighters, one of whom blinded a Rooseveltian eye in a White House bout.” (p 672)</p>

<p>(About the U2 affair) “The COncord of Camp David was replaced with teh grapes of wrath.” (p 924)</p>

<p>And my aboslute FAVORITE, involving mixed metaphors, incorrect analogies (because vegetables are usually kept in cellars, not fruits) and a heckuva long sentence:</p>

<p>(About the Spanish-AMerican War) “Enthusiam over these triumphs made easier the rush dwon the thory path of empire. America did not start the war with imperialistic motives, but after falling through the cellar door of imperialsim in a drunked fit of idealism, it wound up with imperialistic and colonial fruits in its grasp.”</p>

<p>I LOVE THE AMERICAN PAGEANT! List your favorite parts below.</p>

<p>“Statutory neutrality, though of undoubted legality, was of dubious morality.”</p>

<p>LOL. Forget what that was talking about but I had to read it over 5 times to understand…especially at one in the morning :P</p>

<p>haha well I don’t have my American Pageant anymore, but I do remember being amused about their constant use of “footloose”, like to describe the men involved in Bacon’s Rebellion</p>

<p>and another few favorites… </p>

<p>urgh I wish I remembered it verbatim, but it was talking about how the later settlers of Massachusetts weren’t quite as pious, and that “they seemed to care more about cod than about God”</p>

<p>“saying Americans won the revolution would be like saying ‘Daddy and I killed the bear’” aahh that one was so random.</p>

<p>…can you tell I really only read for APUSH in the first semester?</p>

<p>my very favorite (the only i remember, about the twenties)-</p>

<p>“Many taboos flew out the window as sex-conscious Americans let themselves go. As unkowing Freudians, teenagers pioneered the sexual frontiers. Glued together in rhythmic embrace, they danced to jazz music squeaking from phonographs. In an earlier day, a kiss had been the equivalent of a proposal of marriage. But in the new era, exploratory young folk sat in darkened movie houses or took to the highways and bywyas in automobiles. There the youthful ‘neckers’ and ‘petters’ poached upon the forbidden territory of each other’s bodies.”</p>

<p>I think I’ll actually miss this book.</p>

<p>“The British are committing an assault on the sacred rights of freedom, and they must be stopped.”</p>

<p>I don’t know why i like this one.</p>

<p>Haha, good ones. I tried to find some of those, but I didn’t do a very thorough job, so the best I could come up with was </p>

<p>" An accumlulating mass of footloos, impoverished freeman was drifting discontentedly about the Chesapeake region by the late seventeenth century." (p 66)</p>

<p>Just flipped to a random page and found one.</p>

<p>“Lordly Britons, whose suddenly swollen empire had tended to produce swollen heads, were in no mood for back talk.” (p 119)</p>

<p>This is kind of addicting.</p>

<p>Actually, that quote continues by saying “Puffed up over their recent victoies, they were already annoyed with their unruly colonials. The stage was set for a violent fmaily quarrel.”</p>

<p>Oh, and I forgot one of the best.</p>

<p>“Providentially for Bunau-Varilla, Mount Pelee, on teh West Indian island of Martinique, blew its top in May 1902 and wiped out some thirty thousand people.” (p 673)</p>

<p>on the purchase of Alaska from Russia:</p>

<p>Americans did not feel that they could offend their great and good friend, the tsar, by hurling his walrus-covered icebergs back into his face.</p>

<p>This was from a very old edition, and it’s a title I think: “Ford, not a Lincoln.” I don’t know why, but I found it hilarious.</p>

<p>There was a point where they used the word “poopy.” Everyone in my class was shocked out of their minds. I also love when they’re describing presidents as total hotties, like with Kennedy. Someone in my class did a parody of their description in a presentation. Hilarious. <em>sigh</em> I’m gonna miss that book.</p>