'Governerds' pack State Theatre in Minneapolis for author Sharon McMahon

They danced. They screamed. They lined up outside the State Theatre in Minneapolis to buy T-shirt after T-shirt, poster after poster.

And book after book. This was, after all, a book event.

Duluth-based Sharon McMahon, who dubs herself "America's Government Teacher," wrote a nonfiction book of history, "The Small and the Mighty." But her tour, which packed the downtown theater Saturday night, felt more like a concert than a book talk, thanks to a DJ-led dance party and fans who had fashioned their own T-shirts, buttons and friendship bracelets.

This was a rare chance to see, in person, a woman they'd been watching on her Instagram account, @SharonSaysSo, and hearing on her podcast, "Here's Where It Gets Interesting." Many said McMahon, 47, had changed their relationship to the news, to the internet and to their fellow Americans.

"Media tends to create division. And, yet, clearly hope sells, too," said Stacy Wilson, 50, of Minneapolis. "Hope has sold out the State Theatre tonight."

Wilson arrived Saturday sporting a blazer, a brooch and beaded bracelets, including one that spelled out, "History matters." She'd already listened to the audiobook version of "The Small and the Mighty" and decided to snag a VIP ticket to the show for "the inspiration, the comedy, the dance party. That, together, is Sharon."

On Saturday afternoon, ahead of the show, dozens of Twin Cities-based "Governerds," as they're known, packed downtown Thai restaurant Sawatdee.

As they took a group photo they shouted, "Governerd!" They penned thank-you cards for McMahon's staff. They signed a quilted, framed silhouette like the one on McMahon's book cover.

Terry Dahl, 63, sewed the cover from scraps using a coloring sheet she received for preordering the book. "I didn't see it as a coloring sheet," she said. "I saw it as a pattern." Dahl, who has been quilting since she was a child, figured she'd affix the young woman's profile to a jean jacket or a purse.

But when the group's organizers put out a call for gifts for McMahon, Dahl thought, "OK, I'll give her up."

Dahl stumbled upon McMahon's Instagram account in its early days, when McMahon, then a portrait photographer, was debunking conspiracy theories about the Electoral College using props from her photo studio. Quickly, Dahl became hooked.

"There was no anger," said Dahl, who lives in Rosemount. "Here's someone presenting the facts."

Minneapolis was among many sold-out shows on McMahon's 14-city tour that launched in late September, in the midst of a fraught election season.

The crowd, mostly made up of women — mothers and daughters, sisters and friends since college — arrived early for trivia. There were questions about history, about presidents, about McMahon herself. "As evidenced by her accent, Sharon is a proud resident of which state?"

DJ Jimmy Rock took the stage, and the 2,100-seat theater stood up, dancing to the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody," Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" and Rihanna's "We Found Love." Many sang along. Some waved small U.S. flags.

Then McMahon stepped onstage in a white pantsuit, dancing and waving. The crowd screamed.

"Omigosh," she said, drawing out her vowels, "I get to talk in my accent the whole show. Yes!"

McMahon started with a few jokes that wouldn't have worked in other cities including one about how her mother moved from southern California to Minnesota on the premise that her father owned a house.

"He, in fact, had a hunting shack," she said, adding that the abode had dirt floors. "I can tell this joke [here], because if you bring up the concept of hunting shack in other places ... what is a hunting shack to a show in Los Angeles?"

She told stories of growing up in Duluth, where she spent her free time at the library or cold-calling folks for an extremely scientific survey of residents' views on the Loch Ness monster. She talked about her grandparents meeting at a Kansas City club for tall people called the KC Skyliners and about how her 6-foot-7-inch son was in the audience.

Then, a half hour in, McMahon launched her presentation, diving into the stories that didn't make it into her book, a New York Times bestselling work highlighting the lesser-known people — most of them women, some of them teachers — who shaped the country.

Like that book, which is sprinkled with funny asides, the two-hour talk mixed history with humor.

She spoke slowly and emphatically when talking about the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and its vision of a country that, at its best, is just, peaceful, good and free.

"If that is not a north star that we should point ourselves to today, I don't know what is." McMahon said. "And we might disagree on what constitutes America being good and doing good in the world, and that's part of living in a democracy, right? To have those kinds of spirited discussions.

"But if we cannot have as a mission statement that these are our highest values, then perhaps we are headed in the wrong direction."

She challenged her audience to move the country in the right direction noting that most of the heroines she'd highlighted had no grand fortune or national platform. Instead, they just "kept on doing the next needed thing."

There is no one coming with "the plan," she said, at the talk's end. "And if they are trying to come with a plan, they want to be a dictator." Not having "the plan" is good news, she continued, to laughter and applause, "because that means we get to be the plan."

Two friends on the main floor high-fived. Then the crowd filed out of the Minneapolis theater and most went back out into the world. But dozens lined up for merch forming a line that left the theater and snaked around the block.

"I don't think I've ever had a line go out of the building," said Carter Goulson, the front-of-house usher who held an "end of merch line" sign.