Proust's Last Beer: A History of Curious Demises

By Bob Arnebeck

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140050221
• ISBN13: 9780140050226
• Release Date: August 1980
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Very entertaining

I'm surprised I'm the first person to review this book. It's an entertaining look at a very specialized aspect of history--how people met their timely--or perhaps, untimely ends. Actually, it's a great idea, and I'm surprised no-one thought of it before. Some of the people are famous, including presidents, famous scientists, writers, composers and artists, and so on. Others are more obscure. In fact, there were more names I didn't recognize than those I did, but then I'm not a historian. (But then, how many Americans remember anything about Zachary Taylor, who's mentioned in the book, and he was president). Some of the demises are funny, others are sad, and others are merely odd or interesting. The book covers hundreds of people, and the entries range from a few sentences to several paragraphs, depending on how complicated the events leading up to the person's death were, or how involved the death itself was. (After reading this book, I can only hope for a simple, uncomplicated death, lest someone think it worthy of being immortalized. In any case, I'm not that artistically creative, so hopefully the manner of my death won't be the one place where I succeed in doing something remarkably inventive or different. :-) There are so many people, both famous and obscure, here, that it was almost too many to absorb for my taste, but you could just look up the people you're interested in and read the book like that. Then branch out into the more obscure names later, some of whom had deaths far more notable than their accomplishments in real life. And some of the most famous people died quite ordinary, mundane, and fairly boring deaths. (Of course, trying to die a more exciting death conjures up some very odd fantasies, at least for me :-)). The book is well-written and fun to read, and if more history books were as entertaining as this one, more people would read it.