The definitive source book on the true causes of death of public figures –– providing the ultimate demise of heroes and icons, politicians and celebrities, inventors and explorers, business leaders and sports figures, as well as the unlikely endings of radicals, Nobel Prize winners, and others.
The Portable Obituary examines revealing details about how famous persons' deeds, intimate habits, and lifestyles –– good and bad –– ultimately influenced their mode of death and, in due course, determined their role in history and culture. Author Michael Largo makes clear that life, famous or not, can only be fully understood backwards. The true cause of death is often the one omitted detail of history, but in fact reveals the most poignant snapshot of an individual's life.
Excerpt
There is no other work that reviews the lives of the prominent, illustrious, and legendary from the cause of death vantage point, presenting unique, meaningful, and original thumbnail biographies. By using archeological records, published obituaries, techniques of forensic interpretation –– The Portable Obituary is a one–of–a–kind reference work.
Professional Reviews
Miami Herald
"There are, of course, so many ways to go -- some too gruesome to ponder, others too lackluster to recall -- but the death that most tickles the fancy of Michael Largo is the one experienced by jockey Frank Hayes in 1923. Hayes, 35, was a stable hand who managed to talk the owner of a horse named Sweet Kiss into letting him ride a race at Belmont Park. Hayes was right when he told the guy he knew how to make that horse a winner; Sweet Kiss came in first. Hayes, however, didn't come... "
Michael Largo, the man who illuminated readers on the myriad ways of death in Final Exits, has compiled a fascinating, off-beat, and darkly humorous necrology that provides the grim, often outrageous details about the passing of influential persons. Meticulously researched—employing archaeological records, published obituaries, official documents, and forensic evidence—this authoritative, one-of-a-kind reference presents the unabashed truth about a multitude of celebrity deaths, while examining the various deeds, misdeeds, and lifestyle quirks that hastened the demise and determined the departed's role in history and popular myth. The Portable Obituary has the skinny on what made our late icons—whether through overindulgence or neglect: on the john, in the sack, or in some spectacular accident—what they are today: dead!
New York Daily News
"The Portable Obituary: How the Famous, Rich and Powerful Really Died" (HarperCollins, $14.95) is odd and oddly interesting. It seems author Michael Largo has made something of a hobby, or perhaps an obsession, collecting at times arcane information on death styles. He's also author of "Final Exits: The Illustrated History of How We Die." This is the kind of book that raises questions you might not think to ask. Such as, "Who lives longer: artists or clowns?" Or, "Why do many celebrities die within two weeks of their birthdays?" At any rate, any book that twins Duane Allman in the same section as Archimedes can be said to be original.
Obituary Guide
The new book The Portable Obituary: How the Famous, Rich, and Powerful Really Died by Michael Largo makes for fascinating - if irreverent – reading.
A cheeky and even disrespectful reference work, the book is an alphabetical listing of famous deaths – from Alexander the Great to Guy Williams (Zorro). But it is also much more.
Largo illustrates how the way his subjects lived is often related to how they died. He documents how their “deeds, intimate habits, and lifestyles, good and bad, ultimately influenced their mode of death and, in due course, determined their role in history and culture.”
The Portable Obituary can be read for sheer interest and satisfying our sometimes morbid curiosity. As Largo says, “Who wouldn’t want to know what happened to the inventor of the bar code, or the Popsicle, or the disposable camera?”
Largo writes in a serendipitous style, wandering where his research and fancy take him. John and Lionel Barrymore’s account leads to an entry explaining the role of alcoholism in death. Rock Hudson’s to a note about actors and AIDS. Brian Jones (late of the Rolling Stones, found dead in a swimming pool) to a description of other musicians and their deaths by “misadventure.”
A good obituary is an illumination of a life lived. As Michael Largo, the author of The Portable Obituary: How the Famous, Rich, and Powerful Really Died points out, “Life, famous or not, can only be understood backward.”
So Ya' Wanna' Be A Teacher is a humorous revolutionary book that tells exactly what goes on in a typical American public school. E-book version is available at Kindle, at Nook and at Smashwords.
