How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous

Gr 5 Up—In this follow-up to How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous (Walker, 2011), Bragg pokes fun, plays up, and revels in the mistakes of 14 famous figures because "There's nothing better than reading about how someone else messed up." Some of the people have character flaws, others made bad decisions and one, Susan B. Anthony, just didn't live to see her major life goal achieved. The majority of the individuals are Western men with recognizable names, such as Marco Polo and Thomas Alva Edison, who will be remembered for more than their accomplishments once Bragg is done with them. She doesn't pull any punches when describing Henry VIII's indiscretions in Anne Boleyn's chapter, Vincent Van Gogh's complete lack of friends, or J. Bruce Ismay's cowardice on the Titanic, which puts a matte of humanity on the usually shiny package of history. O'Malley's fabulous caricature-like illustrations perfectly accentuate the text and spice up the layout. Written in a chatty style, full of wit and laugh-out-loud moments, this charmingly irreverent delivery of history is not only entertaining but packed full of lessons to be learned.—Heather Acerro, Rochester Public Library, MN