Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

On the outside, the book looks very interesting. The set-up itself is nice with many full color pictures and maps. Each entry is two pages accompanied with text on one side and a map or other illustration on the other. However, the devil is in the details and they are numerous. For starters, too many of the entries are completely pointless. Why? For a book called "Lost States," too many examples would never have been considered for statehood nor would ever seriously be considered for statehood. Some examples of this are Rio Rico (Texas), Saipan, Guyana, Boston, Chicago, Sicily, Navassa Island, etc. Most of these are complete jokes because of some complaint over taxes or some nameless politician says something that is never seriously considered. There are also many amateurish errors. At one point, President William McKinley is referred to as James McKinley. A picture allegedly of Confederate President Davis does not look like him at all (because it is not). The section on Rio Rico completely fails to mention how the Texan town was ceded to Mexico back in the seventies (rather the author implies it is still U.S. territory). He incorrectly says the Northern Mariana Islands were under U.S. control since 1898, when in reality they were not occupied by the U.S. until World War II. For whatever reason, the author also feels it necessary to criticize George W. Bush and the Iraq War on multiple occasions. The most notable of this is in the section on Iceland. What does Bush and the Iraq War have to do with Iceland's potential statehood? Absolutely nothing. So why mention it there at all? The book also fails in its omissions. In the section on Cuba, there is no mention of the Ostend Manifesto and the attempts to annex the island in the 1840s and 1850s. There is no section on the proposed Territory of Jefferson (the one that eventually became Colorado). The author is obviously not a historian or a serious researcher and his writing style shows that. It might sound like I am just complaining, but I bought this book to learn some new things. How am I supposed to trust information that I am not familiar with when I keep finding error after error on things I already know? The only sections that are really worth anything are the ones on Deseret, Franklin, and Puerto Rico. The rest is just nonsense. In conclusion, I do not recommend this book. It is filled with errors, nonsense, and omissions. As another reviewer said, it is "not worth the paper its written on."