Thanks going out to the great folks at Random House for providing copies of two new releases AND also for providing an extra copy of each to be given away to a reader! See my second blog posting for information on the other book. The press releases are kind of long and didn't format well.Now, if you would like a FREE copy, be sure to read the press release below and then post a comment telling me what you think you will like about this book. On June 3rd I'll take a look at the comments and choose a winner. Please make sure I have a way to contact you in order to get your address. The book is ready to send out!
The first ever complete biography of “Believe It or Not!”
creator Robert Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned
globe-trottingplayboy millionaire, who achieved global
celebrity by documenting and celebrating the world’s
strangest oddities.
creator Robert Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned
globe-trottingplayboy millionaire, who achieved global
celebrity by documenting and celebrating the world’s
strangest oddities.
A CURIOUS MAN
The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It
or Not!” Ripley
By Neal Thompson
one of the most popular and widely read syndicated
cartoonists in the country during the 1930s, and
Thompson delivers an equally
fascinating biography that captures the influence of Ripley’s work life then
and now, well into the age of television and the Internet ….Thompson superbly
shows how Ripley’s work
is the basis for today’s more extreme reality shows by
teaching readers ‘to gape with respect at the
weirdness of man and nature.’” —Publishers
Weekly
seeker who always believed there was something even
more unusual just around the corner. A
Curious Man
is a fine introduction to a man who, for most of us, has been
merely the name above a famous title.” —Booklist
“What’s truly unbelievable is that it’s taken us so
long to get a full-fledged biography of this great American
character, a man
who tapped into our fascination with bizarre non-fiction and who can rightly
claim to be
the godfather of Reality TV. It was worth the wait.”—A.J. Jacobs, New
York Times bestselling
author of The
Know-It-All and The Year of Living
Biblically
“Anyone who wants to understand America needs to read this book.”—Ben Fountain, Winner of the
Pen/Hemingway
Award and author of the National Book Award Finalist Billy Lynn’s Long
Halftime Walk
“Turning the phrase ‘believe it or not’ into a
global brand and multimedia empire built on equal doses o
f sex, information,
and oddity, Robert Ripley played a fascinating role in the rise of modern
American entertainment….Shrewdly, he conjured a first-person fairy tale for the
modern age, helping millions to
forget the specter of world war and
depression. Now, for the first time anywhere, Thompson brings us
Ripley
in all his gaudy glory, crafting a hardboiled Horatio Alger story for a
media-obsessed age.”
—Tom Reiss, author
of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Black Count
“Ralph
Waldo Emerson once said that the history of a time can be resolved in the
biography of a few
stout and earnest people. Robert Ripley was certainly
one of those and, in this fascinating account,
Thompson rescues for us a
colorful slice of history.”—Colum McCann, bestselling author of
Let the Great World Spin
“A
Curious Man is the rollicking, terrific story of one of America’s greatest
men. … Thompson tells
the story with a perfectly-pitched sense of what makes such a man, and a nation, tick.
I laughed and
cried. I became convinced that the next slot on Mount
Rushmore should go to Robert ‘Rip’ Ripley.”
—Peter Heller, New
York Times bestselling author of The Dog Stars
“A Curious Man
is a work of real beauty and fun and emotion—and intense readability. It is a
single-session book, one of those that takes your clock and renders it mute
until the book has had
its say. Thompson is the genuine article: smart and
witty, empathetic and a pleasure to read.”
—Darin
Strauss, bestselling author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng
Howard Hughes crossed with P.T. Barnum, Robert “Believe It or Not”
Ripley was a lonely, buck-toothed
cartoonist turned eccentric millionaire and
renowned world-traveler who in the 1930’s and 1940’s earned
international fame
by journeying to the farthest corners of the earth in search of the world’s
most exotic
curiosities. But for all his success in uncovering oddities, no
piece of Ripley’s collection was as remarkable
as the man himself. From his
youth as an awkward young artist with an innate empathy for “freaks,”
to his
golden years spent on a private island stocked with rare artifacts and strange
pets, Ripley lived life on
the kind of grand scale normally confined to
fiction. Now with A Curious Man: The Strange and
Brilliant Life of Robert
“Believe It or Not!” Ripley (Crown Archetype; May 7, 2013) acclaimed
biographer Neal Thompson has delivered a marvelously compelling account of
this great American story,
told for the first time ever—a thrilling tale of the
underdog who taught us to believe in the unbelievable.
of his day, one of the
highest-paid newspaper men of his generation, and among the best-traveled men
in history, a man whose global dispatches gave readers much-needed
entertainment during the depths
of the Depression. As a media pioneer, he
played a significant role in the evolution of newspapers, radio
and television
that were tapping into something deep in the American consciousness—a taste for
the
titillating and exotic, and a fascination with the fastest, biggest,
dumbest, and most weird. Today, that can
be seen in reality TV, YouTube, America’s
Funniest Home Videos, Jackass, MythBusters and a host of
other pop-culture
phenomena.
In the
end, the supreme irony of Ripley’s life, which was dedicated to exalting the
unusual, is that he may
have been the most amazing oddity of all.
# # #
About the Author
NEAL THOMPSON
is the critically acclaimed author of Light This Candle, Driving with
the Devil,
and Hurricane Season and has contributed to such
publications as Outside, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated.
He
lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons. You can find him at
www.nealthompson.com.
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