Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past & Present - Tapa dura

In Certitude, Adam Begley and Edward Sorel lampoon dignitaries and celebrities from Carry Nation to General George Armstrong Custer, from Arthur Conan Doyle to George W. Bush—all of whom were completely convinced that they were right, and were proven disastrously, unforgettably wrong. Here’s muckraking Lincoln Steffens on Bolshevik Russia before he had even visited the country: “I have seen the future, and it works.” William Butler Yeats, who said to his publisher, regarding his memoir, The Vision, “I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books” (it bombed). And General Custer, just before Little Bighorn looked down from the bluffs at the vast Indian encampment and said: “Hurrah, boys, we’ve got them!”

Brilliant four-color caricatures by the internationally celebrated caricaturist Edward Sorel complement the pithy entries, making Certitude...um, certain to delight, inform, and perhaps chasten the know-it-alls who made The Book of General Ignorance a bestseller.

ADAM BEGLEY has been books editor of the New York Observer since 1996. EDWARD SOREL is a regular contributor to The Atlantic and The New Yorker.