Review: Duluth writer and ‘America’s government teacher’ Sharon McMahon’s book is a fun dive into history

Fans of Sharon McMahon’s “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting” podcast will feel right at home with her book “The Small and the Mighty.”

The Duluth writer’s debut echoes the there’s-more-to-the-story-than-you-learned-in-history-class approach of “Interesting.” Mostly, McMahon (now a contributor to Strib Voices) dives into the tales of Americans — mostly female, mostly people of color — whose contributions altered the course of history but who were written out of history books. So: not Alexander Hamilton, of whom you’ve probably heard (and sung along with) but Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

The former teacher’s podcast, which covers civics and government and whose followers identify as “governerds,” also informs the book. It’s conversational, personal (Andrew Jackson is her least favorite president) and peppered with pop culture references. McMahon herself often enters the chat to comment. When the subject of paleontology comes up, for instance, she writes, “By the way, did anyone actually buy the idea that Ross on “Friends” had a PhD and worked at a very prestigious facility? Come on now.”

My favorite chapters, so packed with drama that they practically beg to be a miniseries, have to do with Clara Brown, an enslaved woman who was born in Virginia in about 1800. Brown mourns the death of one daughter and the sale of another, finds her status as an acknowledged human changes because of moves between free and slave states, becomes a prosperous business owner and humanitarian in the 1870s and then loses her fortune. Through it all, she’s on a desperate, lifelong search for the daughter taken from her on an auction block.

Not all of the stories in “The Small and the Mighty” are as dramatic, but all offer compelling individuals such as Claudette Colvin, a Montgomery, Ala., teenager who refused to give up her seat to a white woman nine months before Rosa Parks did, and poet Katharine Lee Bates, who was inspired by a trip to Colorado to dash off a poem she had no idea would eventually become the song everyone wishes were our national anthem, “America the Beautiful.”

In addition to the (mostly) little-known people it celebrates, “Small and the Mighty” is distinguished by McMahon’s skeptical point of view, which is of a piece with the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning “Caste” author Isabel Wilkerson and others (Wilkerson blurbed “Small”). Often, McMahon writes, the reason a pivotal person’s story is unknown is because they weren’t a white man. Reading the book is a breeze and, occasionally, an outrage because these stories should be more widely known.

Not all of the people in “The Small and the Mighty” are unknown, which brings me to the one nit I’d pick. The book’s subtitle, “Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement,” promises 12 people, but I’ve read the book and I don’t know who those 12 are. The book covers many more than a dozen and isn’t structured in a way that helps us decipher the subtitle — Booker T. Washington, for instance, is profiled but he’s not exactly “unsung,” so does he count? Not sure.

I’m guessing the subtitle was added late in the publishing process, which is why it doesn’t feel accurate. The good news is that pretty much everything else in “The Small and the Mighty” is mighty good.

The Small and the Mighty

By: Sharon McMahon.

Publisher: Thesis, 307 pages, $32.

Event: 7 p.m. Oct. 26, State Theatre, 805 Hennepin Av., Mpls. Only resale tickets are available.