| When your time has come to blow this popsicle stand, your time has come to blow, no matter how high or mighty you may be. What a Way to Go , the first book by New York writer Adele O. Brown, serves as a grim-lite reminder of this, one of death's primary truths.
This is a handsomely designed collection of accounts of the big send-offs of a selection of the 20th century's biggest names – pretty much the kind of people you'd expect to see covered in a book like this get "covered" and how! You get your big name entertainers (M.M., Elvis, Valentino, Kermit), you get the famous and infamous leaders (Churchill, Gandhi, Chairman Mao, the Ayatollah) and a few other notables, such as sports figures, artists and inventors tossed in for good measure. The contents page resembles the A list of folks who get a permanent spot in Madame Tussaud's grand hall.
Each chapter is divided into little sections, letting you know the corpus in question's life accomplishments, along with a detailed account of the actual planting party. Then there's a listing of the news of the day of their demise, along with any last requests and whether there was any "beyond the grave" weirdness, coincidences, etc. This makes for an interesting addition to your bookrack in the privy – quick, light reading, where it doesn't matter what page you open it up on, there's always going to be some morsel of interest.
Of course, this type of publication demands a lot of visual accompaniment: loads of pics of the mobs lining up, the star of the show in peaceful repose (unless you happen to be the late Ayatollah, where you get to take part in a last minute Shi'ite moshpit), the weeping next o' kin, the caskets, incredibly overladen with floral tributes and surrounding statuary. Although well chosen, the somewhat slight selection of pictures is what what keeps What a Way to Go from becoming the full-on coffin table book it perhaps wishes it could've been.
R.I.P., kiddies.... |
