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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950)di Will Cuppy
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. A very interesting and entertaining look at general history. There are many laugh-out-loud comments on the foibles of famous people from Pharaoh to Miles Standish, and various kings, tsars and queens eating habits. This seems to have influenced a number of writers: Sellar & Yateman's '1066 and All That,' as well as 'The Education of Hyman Kaplan.' I think Harry Shearer must have admired this author when he was in middle school (did Harry Shearer go to middle school?) Anyway, I highly recommend it. I'd never heard of Will Cuppy until I found this book and while his coverage of the decline and fall of most people is often smile invoking I found the most interesting part of "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody" the foreword in my edition that gives a potted biography of Cuppy. Beyond the fact that "The Decline and Fall ..." was a posthumous release, Cuppy was somewhat of an eccentric chap who lived as a hermit for years and responded to work offers by saying he wasn't a good writer. After the foreword, much of what Cuppy writes is anti-climatic but there are certainly some interesting sections about various historical features that were both amusing and educational. This book is hilarious and also historically accurate and very carefully researched. It was published posthumously and one can only imagine the wonderful updates that would have occurred to subsequent additions if he had lived. The footnotes are witty and sharp and in no way detract from the rest of the work. This is the way history should be written and taught. The historical characters are brought back to earth and are written as real humans with all of their foibles exposed for laughs. For those that love history, this is a must read. For those who love humour, you will get plenty of laughs while also getting educated. Don't forget to read the afterword. It discusses Will Cuppy in depth. I can only imagine that my place will look like his by the time I am dead. He was a misanthrope after my own heart. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle Collane EditorialiNonpareil Books (31) MenzioniElenchi di rilievo
So you think you know most of what there is to know about people like Nero and Cleopatra, Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun, Lady Godiva and Miles Standish? You say there's nothing more to be written about Lucrezia Borgia? How wrong you are, for in these pages you'll find Will Cuppy footloose in the footnotes of history. He transforms these luminaries into human beings, not as we knew them from history books, but as we would have known them Cuppy-wise: foolish, fallible, and very much our common ancestors.When it was first published in 1950, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody spent four months on The New York Times best-seller list, and Edward R. Murrow devoted more than two-thirds of one of his nightly CBS programs to a reading from Cuppy's historical sketches, calling it the history book of the year. The book eventually went through eighteen hardcover printings and ten foreign editions, proof of its impeccable accuracy and deadly, imperishable humor. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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It's also hard to know how seriously to take any of it. I mean, in general it's clearly not meant to be taken terribly seriously at all, but apparently Cuppy actually did to a lot of very real research on his subjects. So I imagine a lot of what he includes is more or less historically accurate, but you never do quite know what's established fact, what's mere rumor, and what's just been thrown in because it's funny.
This volume also features some droll cartoon illustration and two additional pieces about various royal personages: one involving humor and pranks, which I didn't find all that entertaining, and one about their eating habits and food preferences, which I kind of did.
Rating: It's honestly quite hard to rate this. There's a fun, oddball charm to it that makes me want to be kind to it, but I really did find the humor value variable. I guess I'm going to resist the urge to be extra generous and call it 3.5/5. ( )