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

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

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson profile over five dozen incredibly diverse historical characters in THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, ranging from Ben Franklin and Genghis Khan to Pieter Stuyvesant and Tallulah Bankhead.

The mini-biographies, which run anywhere from about three to eight pages, are arranged in chapters that tie together a handful of people based upon some commonly-shared aspect of their lives. For example, everyone in Chapter 7, "The Monkey-Keepers" (including Rembrandt, Frida Kahlo, and Madame Mao), had a simian companion at some point in their lives. In Chapter 9, "Once You're Dead, You're Made for Life" we learn about five people (including Karl Marx and Nikola Tesla) whose most significant contributions weren't fully recognized or realized until after their deaths.

As short as they are, none of the biographies could be considered "complete." But they certainly give enough information to give the reader an incentive to seek "further reading," and in fact, the authors have helpfully provided at the end of the book, several pages of references for those who want to dig a little deeper.

When reading a book that I intend to review for Amazon's Vine program, I usually stick little scraps of paper in those pages that contain some tidbit that I don't want to neglect to mention. The only issue with this book is that by the time I was finished reading, I had filled it with a small bag of confetti... there were far more interesting highlights than I could ever write about in a single review.

One of the more startling bookmarks was placed in Alfred Kinsey's bio. We all know that he was a pioneering sex researcher, publishing two incredibly frank books (SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN FEMALE) in 1948 and 1953. How Kinsey managed to get so many people --in the 1940s and 50s no less-- to give graphic details about their sexual habits is noteworthy. More stunning still was the revelation about Kinsey's own sexual practices. So as to avoid stepping over the bounds of decency, I'm not going to reveal the details in this review, but suffice it to say, he was doing things with a toothbrush that did not involve the prevention of cavities.

At the other end of the sexually-adventurous spectrum was John Harvey Kellogg, who despite fostering over forty children with his wife (and adopting seven of them), believed that one of the keys to healthy living was to suppress ones sexual urges. According to the book, he "was still a virgin when he died aged almost ninety-two."

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was just six years old when she contracted polio. She lived in pain from this point on in her life. It got worse --twelve years later she was a passenger on a bus that was broadsided by a train. She spent a year in bed recovering from the horrific injuries suffered in the crash --and it was during this time that she became an artist-- her father had rigged an apparatus with a mirror enabling her to see and draw objects in her room while confined to bed, flat on her back.

There are over sixty other equally-intriguing stories told here, many about people that were (at least somewhat) familiar to me, others I had never heard of, but virtually all of them were fascinating.

-Jonathan Sabin

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

• ISBN13: 9780307716408
• Condition: New
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The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure Overview

The team behind the New York Times bestseller The Book of General Ignorance turns conventional biography on its head—and shakes out the good stuff.
 
Following their Herculean—or is it Sisyphean?—efforts to save the living from ignorance, the two wittiest Johns in the English language turn their attention to the dead.
 
As the authors themselves say, “The first thing that strikes you about the Dead is just how many of them there are.” Helpfully, Lloyd and Mitchinson have employed a simple—but ruthless—criterion for inclusion: the dead person has to be interesting.
 
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 and—until now—permanently obscure. Spades in hand, Lloyd and Mitchinson have dug up everything embarrassing, fascinating, and downright weird about their subjects’ lives and added their own uniquely irreverent observations.
 
Organized by capricious categories—such as dead people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys, who lost limbs, whose corpses refused to stay put—the dearly departed, from the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve.
 
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)
 
Much like the country doctor who cured smallpox (he’s in here), Lloyd and Mitchinson have the perfect antidote for anyone out there dying of boredom. The Book of the Dead—like life itself—is hilarious, tragic, bizarre, and amazing. You may never pass a graveyard again without chuckling.

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