My Favorite Intermissions: Victor Borge's Lives of the Musical Greats and Other Facts You Never Knew You Were Missing

You laugh when Borge sits down at the piano - now that he has sat down at the typewriter, you'll roar. Had Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz, Mozart and the other great composers in this book known that Victor Borge was watching, perhaps they would have been a little more careful. As it is, those unrestrained geniuses lived as grandly and passionately as they wrote and left a trail of broken hearts, instruments and impresarios in their wakes. The author has picked up all the pieces and put them back together in these unexpurgated, sometimes shocking but totally factual accounts of composers at work, at play and at mischief. The facts - every outlandish, incredible, unbelievable on of them - are as real as the hilarity. Beethoven in jail? Strauss picketed by his second wife? Mozart writing operas in between billiard shots? Absolutely! When you finish this book, you'll know more about the music and musicians than anybody could possibly care to. Su why not start your education and your laughter here.