Muhammad Ali is taking classes at the University of Minnesota. Chris Columbus manufactures stainless steel tubing. And James Dean is a pudgy man from Bismarck, N.D., who sells cars.

They may have famous names, but the similarities to their celebrity counterparts pretty much ends there.

It's all part of the fun in Great Americans: Famous Names, Real People (Bloomsbury, $24.95), a book of photographs and limited text by KK Ottesen.

Ottesen writes in her introduction that the book began as a way to illustrate a broader point: "Why not use the very names that have shaped the country to examine what it has become today? Traveling to each state, I would find and interview someone who shares the name of a famous - or infamous - American icon. And I would ask these people about their daily lives, about what they think it means to be an American."

In small ways, she achieves this goal. Her group does everything from man the fast food window at Church's (Joan Sitting Bull) to create newscasts for Fox TV (Cesar Chavez). Some are obviously living large, others scraping by.

As you would expect, they have varied views of America: Herbert Hoover thinks America is "God's country," and Robert E. Lee thinks "it's the best thing in the world."

But Paul Revere, a man who was thrown off his land for tax evasion, isn't nearly as complimentary. "What does it mean to be an American? Ha ha ha ha. A bunch of people who have fallen asleep who haven't got a clue what's going on."

Revere is similar to his more famous predecessor, in that he is still sounding a warning, of sorts. As for the rest of these faux celebrities, they are living rather routine lives - as different from their namesakes as you could get.

And that seems to be the point. You don't have to be a celebrity, Ottesen seems to be saying, to be worth a page in a book.

On the other hand, as Marion "Babe" Weyant knows, a flashy moniker doesn't hurt either. "The only reason I married him," she says jokingly about her late husband, "(was) so I could be Babe Ruth!"

Patti Thorn, books editor