How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous

If the new Common Core Standards are going to force me to teach more nonfiction, I hope I can use texts like How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous. This is probably the grossest book I've ever read, which is the ultimate compliment for adolescent readers.

Detailing the deaths of nineteen historical figures, Georgia Bragg has done meticulous research and added so many tidbits and facts that readers will spend hours gleefully sharing disgusting information. Kevin O'Malley's illustrations add a touch of humor and lighten the mood of the gruesome deaths.

My students are learning about the Tudor Dynasty, so the sections on Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were among my favorites. In addition to detailing his death (um, did you know his corpse exploded in its coffin?), it has a chart of King Henry's unlucky wives, as well as the amount of food eaten in one day by Henry and his court (including 15 swans and 3,000 pears), and things that weigh as much as Henry VIII (58,060 U.S. pennies). This is exactly the kind of information I want to know about historical figures.

I will be recommending this book widely in order to convince young readers that nonfiction books don't have to be boring.

If you’re looking for one of those stale, moth-eaten, run-of-the-mill history books to fill your idle hours, How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous, by Georgia Bragg, isn’t the book for you.

How They Croaked examines the lives (and putrid deaths) of famous figures from yester-year: Columbus, King Tut, Beethoven, Charles Darwin, and Edgar Allan Poe, just to name a few. It begins with details about each person’s early life and finishes by outlining each knife-riddled, maggot-infested or bacteria-festered demise.

I love this book! It’s well-organized, meticulously-detailed, and full of tidbits and asides that teach you a thing or two (or three) about the medical ignorance of yester-year, even as you double over in side-splitting laughter. You’ll learn how Beethoven’s doctors drilled a hole in his stomach and stuck a hose in it; why Charles Dickens walked in circles and threw raging fits; and why King Tut’s embalmers didn’t preserve his brain. This and other gruesome information is offered in stomach-churning chunks, but is softened quite nicely by the quaintly entertaining artwork of artist Kevin O’Malley.

I do recommend this book to history-lovers young and old, but I warn you, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Bragg even describes it as “pretty much one train wreck after another.” So if you can get past the putricity (I made that word up!) of it all, you’ll absolutely love How They Croaked, by Georgia Bragg.