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

by John Mitchinson and John Lloyd

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.

• ISBN10: 0307716406
• ISBN13: 9780307716408
• Publish Date: 7 September 2010
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Imprint: Crown
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I'm sure I don't have to say the title of this one is what grabbed my attention at the bookstore, and the pull quote from Stephen Fry on the cover made me think it was going to have a decidedly humorous tone.  I was wrong about that, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the read.   

The Book of the Dead (or this one, anyway) is a collection of short biographies of both the people you've heard of (Da Vinci, H.G. Wells, Byron, Genghis Khan) and the people you might not have heard of, but probably should have (Daniel Lambert, Dr. John Dee, Ann Lee).     

Some of the information in the biographies is likely not news to most people, but the authors did something different:  they organised the biographies by rather original criteria, like chapter 1: There's Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life, or chapter 4: Let's Do It (yes, that's meant to be a double entendre), or chapter 7: The Monkey Keepers.  These entertaining groupings allow the authors to come at each biography from a slightly different angle and offer readers information that isn't your run-of-mill biographical data while still keeping things short.   

I learned a lot from each of these 3-4 page biographies (including things about Casanova I'll never be able to unlearn) and the authors kept the narrative interesting and engaging; the writing is never dry, even if it is rarely outright funny.   

A good read, perfect for people who like to keep their history lessons bite-sized.

[elvinagb]

Being a big fan of John Lloyd and his series "Qi" I was excited to read this great little book. Some interesting facts about the dead, both famous and obscure; about how they lived and died. I may keep this handy on my shelf to pick up and read some chapters over again.