How They Croaked: The Awful Ends Of The Awfully Famous

WARNING: Before opening this book, be aware the tales included inside are not for the weak of heart, or stomach. They will include scorching temperatures, sizeable swellings, and bouts with the shivers leaving you begging for air to breath. Your head may be cut off, your body stabbed repeatedly by peers or you may take your own life. Can you handle it? Do you think you have what it takes to get through the entire book?

Since day one, there has always been one solid constant throughout time: people die.

Death is unavoidable, nobody can escape it. Some may believe they can do this, that or the other thing to prolong the period of time before resting in their final slumbering place and others feel when your number is called, it’s time to go, no matter your age.

Georgia Bragg, author of “How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous”, puts a twist on the lives of the people we’ve read about since beginning school. She achieves this through telling of the days before each person selected for her book kicked the bucket, the medical procedures endured by the soon-to-be-dead and what actually killed them.

Bragg has found a way to weave history – be it American History, World History or the way medicine and medical procedures were practiced when these people died – into the comical text. While waiting for the blood spilling moment or the gory execution to take place, you also read and learn a little about the situations these people were in which, in many cases, may have - or did lead – these awfully famous men and women to their deaths.

This book, in no way, is any of the books we read in grade school. It is morbidly educational, darkly entertaining and, with a grip like the Grim Reaper herself, forces you to keep turning the page to read more of the final days of all parties involved.

Beside the stories of death, murder and assassination, at the end of each chapter she includes a page or two dedicated to key words, key phrases, how the story just read influences the way life is today and other tid-bits of information relating to the person the chapter was dedicated to.

So, you may be asking how the deaths of people long ago relate, in any way, to you and you should read this book? How kind of you to inquire, dear reader. Let me ask you a few questions.

Do you know why the calendar we use today is called the Gregorian Calendar? If not, you will. If you care none what the calendar is called and have a larger taste for the grotesque, you will find out a dehydrated human eyeball shrinks away to almost nothing, but when it is rehydrated it will expand almost to its original size. After reading this book, you’ll know what famous dead person doctors today can thank for this information.

Interested yet?

Do you know why the procedure to extract a baby from the belly of its mother is called a C-Section? Do you know that the three letter word for 16-across in the Sunday crossword puzzle with the clue, “this caused the death of Cleopatra” is not “asp” and she died in a completely different way than what most accredit her death to? How many of you know about leeching or bloodletting? You will after reading this book.

Anything?

I’ll assume you’ve all been to parties with great food and drink. Who hosed this party? You know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because in no way, did it even come close to the party Henry VIII threw. You’ll find out why.

Do you like Disney movies? You can learn who John Smith WASN’T when you read about Pocahontas and the ordeal she went through.

But maybe big parties and Disney movies aren’t your cup of tea. Maybe you used to watch ER or are in love with Dr. McDreamy of Grey’s Anatomy. If so, you’ll learn what the secretion of crystallized uric acid is more commonly called. Maybe you like to read as much literature as you can about the same person, place or thing; Jesus Christ being the numero uno topic to have a book based on. Do you know who the 2nd most popular person is to have a book written about them? Go ahead; take a “small” guess.

Though this book is very descriptive – maybe a tad too descriptive for grade school aged children to read – it is full of information of the people involved, their stories and their deaths.

It’s funny, this History business. History is a recorded timetable of the people and events related to the period. Something you would think never changes. But it always changes. Every day.

So, do you think you have what it takes to get through the entire book?

Only History can tell.