GENERAL - NONFICTION
"Almost History" by Roger Bruns 
This book, whose author works for the national archives, is an amusing collection of "Close Calls, Plan B's and Twists of Fate in America's past." Some of the items are merely drafts for press releases if D-day, Apollo 11, etc, failed disastrously. More fascinating were plans for actions not taken - Robert McNamara's meeting with Kennedy on the pre-invasion bombing of Cuba and the prosecution memorandum on indicting
Nixon after his resignation. Others are little known items like Alexander Graham Bell's attempt to locate the bullet in Garfield with an induction coil that failed because the dying President was on a (then) newfangled metal spring mattress and Bell didn't know it. The great majority are amusing, some are poignant (Colonel Travis' appeal for reinforcements at the Alamo - although in the words of Chief Hendrick "if they are to fight, they are to few, if they are to die, they are too many") and H.L. Mencken's dryly humorous falsified history of the bathtub (that got out of hand when too many readers treated it as fact) is a real hoot!
Reviewed by Kenneth S. Smith, 30 November 2000
Hyperion, New York, 2000.
