The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the

The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure

The team behind the New York Times bestseller The Book of General Ignorance turns conventional biography on its headâ€”and shakes out the good stuff.
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Following their Herculeanâ€”or is it Sisyphean?â€”efforts to save the living from ignorance, the two wittiest Johns in the English language turn their attention to the dead.
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As the authors themselves say, â€œThe first thing that strikes you about the Dead is just how many of them there are.â€ Helpfully, Lloyd and Mitchinson have employed a simpleâ€”but ruthlessâ€”criterion for inclusion: the dead person has to be interesting.
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Here, then, is a dictionary of the dead, an encyclopedia of the embalmed. Ludicrous in scope, whimsical in its arrangement, this wildly entertaining tome presents pithy and provocative biographies of the no-longer-living from the famous to the undeservedly andâ€”until nowâ€”permanently obscure. Spades in hand, Lloyd and Mitchinson have dug up everything embarrassing, fascinating, and downright weird about their subjectsâ€™ lives and added their own uniquely irreverent observations.
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Organized by capricious categoriesâ€”such as dead people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys, who lost limbs, whose corpses refused to stay putâ€”the dearly departed, from the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve.
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Discover:

* Why Freud had a lifelong fear of trains
* The one thing that really made Isaac Newton laugh
* How Catherine the Great really died (no horse was involved)
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Much like the country doctor who cured smallpox (heâ€™s in here), Lloyd and Mitchinson have the perfect antidote for anyone out there dying of boredom. The Book of the Deadâ€”like life itselfâ€”is hilarious, tragic, bizarre, and amazing. You may never pass a graveyard again without chuckling.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Crown
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2010-09-07
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Crown
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2010-09-07
Format	Kindle eBook

The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure

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