How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg was a fun and interesting book on 19 world famous people and how they died. The gruesome practices of medicine into the 20th century were often as much to blame for their deaths as the diseases themselves. Saddest of all was the death of George Washington. It’s hard to believe that “doctors” at that time were so ignorant.

Each chapter begins with the life and death of a famous person, and ends with interesting facts. The “sources” and “further reading and surfing” sections at the end of the book provide suggestions for further investigation.

The chapter entitled “One More Thing” shows the interrelatedness of the 19 famous people and thus provides at least some of the reason they were chosen for this book. Overall, it’s an interesting and entertaining book, though perhaps not recommended for the faint-hearted. ( )

A fun YA novel/audiobook, but a little misleading at times.

Charles and Emma Darwin may have had three of their 10 children die, but the others were perfectly healthy, according to Wikipedia. They all went on to have very important lives as well. “The Darwins had ten children: two died in infancy, and Annie's death at the age of ten had a devastating effect on her parents. Charles was a devoted father and uncommonly attentive to his children.[15] Whenever they fell ill, he feared that they might have inherited weaknesses from inbreeding due to the close family ties he shared with his wife and cousin, Emma Wedgwood.
He examined inbreeding in his writings, contrasting it with the advantages of outcrossing in many species.[178] Despite his fears, most of the surviving children and many of their descendants went on to have distinguished careers.
Of his surviving children, George, Francis and Horace became Fellows of the Royal Society,[179] distinguished as astronomer,[180] botanist and civil engineer, respectively. All three were knighted.[181] Another son, Leonard, went on to be a soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist and mentor of the statistician and evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher.[182]”.

You may find this nit-picking, but I don’t. I like the truth. I also like finding out more about the subject at hand, and I can usually be found on Wikipedia and other information laden sites online, reading up on various things that have been mentioned in the audiobooks of ebooks I’m using. (Especially words I’m not familiar with!). And since I didn’t know Mr. Darwin had 10 kids, I thought I’d go look up how they died also, or if they had any health issues, as this novel seems to insinuate. But the remaining Darwin children all lived to a ripe old age, I’m happy to say.
“In 1882 he was diagnosed with what was called "angina pectoris" which then meant coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart. At the time of his death, the physicians diagnosed "anginal attacks", and "heart-failure".[161] Today it is speculated that Darwin was suffering from chronic Chagas disease.[162] This speculation is based on a journal entry written by Darwin, describing he was bitten by the "Kissing Bug" in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1835;[163] and based on the constellation of clinical symptoms he exhibited, including cardiac disease which is a hallmark of chronic Chagas disease.[164][162] Exhuming Darwin's body is likely necessary to definitively determine his state of infection by detecting DNA of infecting parasite, T. cruzi, that causes Chagas disease.[162][163]
He died at Down House on 19 April 1882. His last words were to his family, telling Emma "I am not the least afraid of death—Remember what a good wife you have been to me—Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me", then while she rested, he repeatedly told Henrietta and Francis "It's almost worth while to be sick to be nursed by you".[165] He had expected to be buried in St Mary's churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin's colleagues, after public and parliamentary petitioning, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for Darwin to be honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. The funeral was held on Wednesday 26 April and was attended by thousands of people, including family, friends, scientists, philosophers and dignitaries.[166][23]”

The other people named and researched in this novel were pretty much spot on, on their lives and deaths. You will find in the comments of this post, more quotes and maybe even link about the people in this novel, that I found to have discrepancies.
The audiobook was narrated by L. J. Ganser. He was also pretty good.
This novel, despite the discrepancies, was a fun, quick read. 3.5 stars, and recommended for the young, the strong of stomach, and the young at heart. Or for those who find themselves on wiki to find out more lol. ( )

This book is hilarious. Irreverent history telling, focusing on the deaths of historical figures like Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, Charles Dickens, Marie Curie, and Cleopatra, among others. The telling of the deaths is often gruesome. Here's an example: "Eventually, Henry the Eighth was placed in a not-completely sealed lead coffin. While lying in state, it is believed his toxic remains exploded,and some of his royal splendidness dripped out the side of the coffin overnight." Each death story begins with a short overview of the person's life, before jumping in to how the person died. There are guesses as to what actually caused the death, and after each death story, there are two pages of additional information about the person or the time period in which they lived. Funny black and white drawings accompany each story. This book caught and sustained my attention, and I think most kids would be enthralled by the gory details of each person's death.

I really enjoyed the layout and subject of this book, having once been a ten-year-old with an obsession for the macabre. While some of the material discussed requires that you have "the guts for gore", most of the writing is relatively light and humorous. The design of the book allows a young reader to flip through brief histories involving the deaths of famous people chronologically beginning with King Tut. Two things that are wonderful about this book: 1) the selection of historical figures Bragg chooses to include are appropriate and interesting for ages 7-12, 2) the design and illustrations are engaging and well-placed. Two things that are not great about this book: 1) the sources and historical inaccuracies, 2) the histories of each person are too brief. The book is a good snapshot of biographies with fun facts, quips, and anecdotes, but not extremely thorough if you wish to use it for educational purposes. An overall fun and easy read for the little Wednesday Addams in your life. ( )

Content/Organization: Book is divided into short chapters covering famous individuals from history and how they died, organized chronologically by date of death. Humorous portraits and illustrations are included, as well as some trivia about facts pertinent to the individual's story at the end of each chapter. Some context for their lives is included in the body of text as well.

Style: The book is extremely voice-y, written with jocular irreverence and plenty of sarcasm. It's an engaging, fun read. A great deal of bias, positive and negative, is evident in different chapters of the book towards different characters.

Access features/format: The author's bio indicates that she has little to no background in history or in writing nonfiction. Sources for each chapter are listed, but many appear to be of questionable quality: some by their titles appear to be fairly light secondary sources, some are secondary sources that are decades (sometimes many decades) old, and others are newspaper articles or thematic histories like this one.

Accuracy: The book at time makes some startling errors, such as describing Julius Caesar as being born via c-section, an apocryphal story that is clearly debunked by the historical record. The chapter on Columbus is so devoid of any negative details that I believe it rises to the level of being inaccurate; at a minimum, it's extremely biased. Given the questionable nature of many of the sources cited, these errors are probably to be expected. ( )