The QI Book of the Dead

The QI Book of the Dead

by John Lloyd (Author), John Mitchinson (Author)

Synopsis

' The QI Book of the Dead is a book about life. What an awful thing life is. It's like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless' - Gustave Flaubert. Around 90 billion people have existed since the human race began. From this huge number, the bestselling QI team selected 600 of the finest examples of our species and researched them in depth, distilling this immense banquet of life into an exquisite tasting menu of six-dozen crisp, racy mini-biographies, where the internationally and immortally famous rub shoulders with the undeservedly and (until now) permanently obscure. The object is to learn something about what it means to be alive and how we can make the most of the time we have. The QI Book of the Dead compares and contrasts the different ways individual human beings cope (or fail to cope) with the curves that the uncaring universe throws at us. Collected into themed chapters with thought-provoking titles such as 'There's Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life', 'Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone' and 'Is That All There Is?' here is a chance to share the secrets of the Dead, to celebrate their wisdom, to learn from their mistakes, and to marvel at their bad taste in clothes. The man who is not dead still has a chance. Lebanese Proverb. We don't rule out the alternative possibility of a compassionate God whose motives are beyond our ken.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 448
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 05 Nov 2009

ISBN 10: 0571244904
ISBN 13: 9780571244904
Book Overview: The quirkiest biographical dictionary you'll ever read from the bestselling QI team, full of hilarious facts and details about the most interesting people who ever lived.

Author Bio
John Lloyd has a broadcasting background. As a radio producer he devised The News Quiz and To the Manor Born before moving to television to start Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, and Blackadder. If pressed, he'd concur with Heraclitus: 'abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.' John Mitchinson is from the world of books. The original Marketing Director of Waterstone's, he became Managing Director of Cassell, where he published The Beatles, Michael Palin and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He's with Einstein: 'There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.'