With her nonfiction work, For You, My Hero, Lisa Malooly lays out a smorgasbord of interesting tidbits concerning American history and government. Using phrases from the American Pledge of Allegiance for chapter titles, Malooly covers varied topics, from excerpts from presidential inaugural addresses to what each color of the American flag symbolizes to the origin story behind the expression “melting pot.”

Malooly’s style reflects the chattiness of a neighbor asking “did you know?” questions over a cup of coffee. Her book doesn’t present as a traditional history book with a thorough retelling and analysis of events. Rather, she highlights disparate facts which, together, give the flavor of being an American. Thus, under the chapter entitled “And Justice for All,” she discusses the Congressional Medal of Honor and screen heroes like Superman and Rocky Balboa, but doesn’t touch on the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers.

Although her conversational style is aptly engaging, she often wanders off topic. For instance, she gives a personality traits test under the chapter entitled “And to the Republic,” and a “Cinderella Attitude Quiz” under the chapter entitled “For Which It Stands.” She lapses into an exposition of the dinner table in her “Indivisible” chapter and discusses Shakespeare in her “One Nation” chapter. In addition, the relationship between the chapter headings and their content sometimes appears forced. The connection between a fake commercial for Washy Soap and the heading, “And to the Republic,” seems tangential at best.

Despite all this, For You, My Hero is fun to read and contains so many useful and wide-ranging facts (like the preambles to all the states’ constitutions and the histories behind the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument) that one could keep it as a sort of selective desk reference for American history.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.