Rest in Pieces : The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses

by Bess Lovejoy

• ISBN13: 9781451654981
• ISBN10: 1451654987
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-12
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

A writer and researcher behind the bestselling Schott's Almanacbrings us a delightfully macabre collection of morbid curiosities: tales of what happened to famous people after they died. From Alexander the Great (whose corpse founded a dynasty) to RenÉDescartes (whose skull was separated from his body) and Dorothy Parker (whose ashes were hidden in a filing cabinet for more than a decade), some of the most influential and interesting people in history have journeyed on posthumous adventures none of them could have predicted. Rest in Piecescatalogs stories from the age of antiquity to today, tracing the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death and connecting the lives of the famous deceased to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses. Jim Thorpe's body renamed a city in Pennsylvania. Einstein's brain took a road trip across America. Ted Williams was frozen and then battered with a can of tuna. And Osama bin Laden's corpse was lost among the wavesuntil a California treasure hunter claimed to find it. More than a rich and satisfying source of inappropriate cocktail chatter, Rest in Piecesuses its novel perspective to reveal the lives of the world's most interesting people, and to help us understand the Grim Reaper a little better.