The Big Sleep: True Tales and Twisted Trivia about Death - Hardcover

Orloff, Erica; Baker, JoAnn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517220482 ISBN 13: 9780517220481

Publisher: Gramercy, 2002

Synopsis

A fun and wacky look at the one thing in life we can't escape! These true tales and twisted trivia about death cover serial killers, vampires, and ghosts. Facts you wouldn't know, and death tales you shouldn't know make for an eerie read that may keep you up at night!

About this title

From Booklist

Answering our seemingly inexhaustible fascination with death, Orloff and Baker offer a slim compendium of facts, observations, lists, and general oddments. Particularly noteworthy are a point-by-point, chronological guide to the physical effects death wreaks on the unembalmed human corpse, pop quizzes on grave topics, and more euphemisms for death than one could work into a year's worth of conversation without risking characterization as some kind of obsessive. Withall, this is a lighthearted collection of morbid minutiae--similar, perhaps, to the novelty best-seller of many years ago, 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, but definitely more informative. Of course, lots of the information is anecdotal, and the bibliography includes sources mildly fraudulent (e.g., Ripley of "Believe It or Not" fame) and professionally skeptical (e.g., James Randi), but those things indicate the kind of eclectic fun the little book affords. Mike Tribby

About this edition

• Publisher: Gramercy
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0517220482
• ISBN 13: 9780517220481
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176