| The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody Contributor(s): Cuppy, Will (Author), Steig, William (Illustrator) |
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ISBN: 1567923771 ISBN-13: 9781567923773 Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher OUR PRICE: $15.26 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2008 Annotation: 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 Godica 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. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Humor | Topic - History - History | World - General - Humor | Form - Parodies |
| Dewey: 902.07 |
| LCCN: 2011284654 |
| Series: Nonpareil Books |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.3" W x 8.2" (0.65 lbs) 224 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A very funny view of the great, and nearly great, people throughout history by New Yorker humorist Will Cuppy. Hysterically funny (yet historically accurate), Cuppy transforms luminaries such as Nero, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Lucrezia Borgia, Attila the Hun, Lady Godiva and Miles Standish into human beings. These are not the usual portraits but as we would have known them Cuppy-wise: foolish, fallible, and very much our common ancestors. After leaving Chicago for New York City, for eight years, from 1921 to 1929, Will Cuppy lived as a hermit on Jones Island, off Long Island's South Shore. From there, he gained a reputation for his factual but funny magazine articles and wrote the book, How to be a Hermit, his first bestseller. The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody was left unfinished after Cuppy's death in 1949. The manuscript was completed by a friend from some 15,000 note cards in Cuppy's apartment. The book spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has endured as a classic of American humor. |