More questionable publishing ventures

I got another Daedalus catalog, "History," and there's a troubling number of biographies and attempted rehabs of criminal characters, viz:

• Blacklisted by History: the untold story of Joseph McCarthy and his fight against America's enemies, by M. Stanton Evans; the thesis of this book is claimed to be that McCarthy was not "... a lying Communist (sic) witch hunter and bully ..." Huh. Could have fooled me.
  
• Polk: the man who transformed the presidency and America, by Walter R. Borneman. "...the reasons why he was one of America's most astute and powerful presidents." Again: Huh.
  
• Not one but two bios of Walt Disney, for Christ's sake
  
• Rocky Marciano: The Rock of His Times, by Russell Sullivan. Reading about a boxer has to be right up there with watching golf on TV.
  
• Lion of Hollywood: the Life and Legend of Louis Mayer, by Scott Eyman Perhaps appropriately sandwiched on the page between the Marciano book and the one following.
  
• Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, by Stephen Doril. For the record, this book isn't, apparently, any kind of an apology for Mosley, but you still won't like the ending (Mosley didn't get hanged, post-war, as he certainly should have been.)
  
• Again on the same page, one above the other: Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, by Conrad Black. Two in the series, Great Paranoid National Leaders.
  

And of course, if biographies of the wild n' wacky aren't your thing, there's the usual crop of books by wackos in their own right:

• Non-violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Kurlanski. "... argues that any war could have been avoided by non-violent means ..." Perhaps uncoincidentally, the same page offers Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions, by Alan Axelrod. If you read the first, I'd suggest following up with the second, just as an antidote.
  
• And finally, just to reassure us that the likes of Barry Fell are still with us, there's 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies. Mr. Menzies, you should know, is also the author of a book called 1421: The Year China Discovered America, which claims, among other things, that Verrazano saw Chinese people in Rhode Island in 1542. There are many, many theorists of this ilk, and they make great reading, as long as you keep firmly in mind that they're barking mad.