The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody - Softcover

Cuppy, Will

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567923771 ISBN 13: 9781567923773

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2008

Synopsis

So you think you know most of what there is to kow 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. A Nonpareil book by David R. Godine.

About this title

About the Author

Will Cuppy wrote a weekly column of reviews of mystery books for the New York Herald Tribune and various freelance journalism for other newspapers and magazines. His other books include How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931), How to Get from January to December and how to become Extinct. He died in 1949.

Edition details

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1567923771
• ISBN 13: 9781567923773
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224
• Illustrator: Steig William