Yale Templeton, an undistinguished professor of History at a university in Toronto, has made a shocking discovery: Abraham Lincoln was not, in fact, assassinated, but faked his own death so that he could assume a new identity and move to Canada. And the reason for Lincoln's ruse? Even more shocking. When the news breaks, the sitting President enlists his chief security officers to find the incriminating evidence and silence Templeton.
Lincoln's Briefs is both a burlesque of university life and a satiric unravelling of Canadian—and American—national identity. It is also, in its own madcap way, a manifesto for the right of all people to lay claim to their true selves.
Reviews
"Certainly not the Lincoln of Gettysburg or Mount Rushmore. More Honest Babe than Honest Abe. An absolute delight. Hilarious."
—Michael Enright, host of The Sunday Edition, CBC Radio One
"Abraham Lincoln faked his own assassination and moved to Canada to live a life of freedom and high fashion? When I heard that, I thought it was too funny for words. Boy was I wrong. Michael Wayne's Lincoln's Briefs proves beyond all doubt that not only is it not too funny for words, it's funnier than anybody could imagine. I laughed so hard when I was reading it that I fell down and hurt myself, and I was lying in bed at the time."
—Joey Slinger, author of Punch Line, and winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour
"Lincoln's Briefs wraps brilliant satire inside a veil of improbable tales and even more improbable characters. A meditation, at once scathing and side-splitting, on what it means to be Canadian (and American too), this hilarious send-up also proclaims the right of all individuals to imagine themselves in whatever way they choose. Wayne's exposé of our national illusions is merciless, his celebration of the possibilities of human imagination, liberating."
—Paul Gross, Canadian actor and filmmaker
"I picked this book up for the airplane and laughed all the way across the Atlantic. Where else but in Canada would the holy grail be a great white moose—or is it the moose who is looking for the grail? Whatever, the spirit of Stephen Leacock is alive and delirious."
—Timothy Brooks, author of Vermeer's Hat
Author(s)
Michael Wayne
Michael Wayne is a professor of history, emeritus at the University of Toronto. He is the prize winning author of three books of American history: Death of an Overseer, The Reshaping of Plantation Society, and Imagining Black America.