If you’re going to lie about the past, you might as well make up lies that are fun! Washington Post humor columnist and 21st Thurber Prize for American Humor finalist Alexandra Petri’s new, side-splitting work of historical humor uses imagined documents to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation’s complicated past.

From the Spanish conquistadors to the Salem witch trials, from Paul Revere’s ride to the exclamation mark in Oklahoma!, Alexandra Petri’s U.S. History presents a deranged timeline in which John and Abigail Adams try sexting, the March sisters from Little Women are sixty feet tall, Nicola Tesla’s friends stage an intervention when he falls in love with a pigeon, and Susan Sontag goes to summer camp. A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Petri’s “historical fan fiction” shows why she has been hailed as “genius,” a “national treasure,” and “one of the funniest writers alive.”

The Author’s Table Dinner and Main Event will be hosted and moderated by satirist, author, and Thurber Prize for American Humor award show writer Brooke Preston.

You will have the opportunity to ask the speaker questions after the event, purchase books, and get your books signed.