How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous

Bragg, Georgia. How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous. 2011. 184p. ISBN 978-0-8027-9817-6. Available at 920 BRA on the library shelves.

You know that George Washington had wooden teeth. You also know that Napoleon was known for holding his stomach in paintings and on the battlefield. But did you know that both George Washington’s mouth and Napoleon’s stomach were the direct cause of their deaths?

Everybody dies at some point in their life. Most die at home or anonymously, but we don’t find these deaths as interested as those of the awfully famous. Before modern medicine, death was painful and disgusting, and the death of famous people is well documented and provides a gross outlook on not only the process of death but the last minutes of those about to die. 

Witty and filled with interesting facts about deaths, Croaked explores the life and, more importantly, the death of 19 individuals: King Tut, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Pocahontas, Galileo Galilei, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, James Garfield, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein.