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How They Croaked: The Awful Ends Of The Awfully Famous (2011)

by Georgia Bragg(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0802798179 (ISBN13: 9780802798176)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Walker Childrens

review 1: Thursday October 30, 2014The book How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg is one of my favorite nonfiction books that I read so far. The details that she adds are descriptive and make you feel like you where there. Besides that, I learned various facts about many famous people, such as George Washington, Pocahontas, Mozart and Edgar Allan Poe. Many of the people's death are disgusting, but that's what makes them good. I learned a few interesting words and facts while reading this book as well. I learned the word "bloodletting," which was the extraction of "bad-blood" from the body. They did this as a remedy to almost any infection or disease that people had in the olden days, when most of the time all it did was make things worse. I also learned the word "leeching," which is alm... moreost the same as bloodletting, but it is done by a bloodsucking worm. What the less knowledgeable doctors did was put the leeches on the skin and suck out all of the "bad blood", and then let the leeches fall off by themselves. Many of the ways people died are very interesting, but I especially liked the death of Marie Antoinette, originally named Maria Antonia. She died at something called the guillotine, which is a machine with a wooden structure that by pulling a lever, a blade falls on your head. "The mechanism falls like lightning, you won't even feel the slightest pain," assured Dr. Guillotin. What I liked most about the chapter of Marie Antoinette was her last words, which were "I did not do it on purpose." She said this when she accidentally stepped on the foot of the executioner. I liked this because it almost summed up all of her life; she was forced to marry the king of France at the age of fourteen and during the French Revolution the people of France did not want monarchies, so she was forced to die. This is why I liked her last words, "I did not do it on purpose." The other persons life that I think Georgia Bragg did well on describing was that of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. She was a solitary woman who did not want to get married, because she saw that her father, Henry VIII, was unhappy because of marriage. She accomplished a few unnecessary things, like beheading other people, but she almost stopped the Spanish Armada. I enjoyed reading about the life of Queen Elizabeth because she was brave woman with a clear plan and idea in her head. How They Croaked is an original and creative story, both with real facts and imaginable details. Tuesday November 4, 2014 After finishing the book How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg, this book is recommended to anyone who likes lots of (sometimes disgusting) details and information of the life of famous people. There are many good and bad things about this book. Firstly, it not only described the way famous people died, but also about their lives and what led them to their death. This is appreciable because like this you not only know them after their death, but what their career was, their family and where they were from. For example, Marie Curie. Marie was a physicist and chemist, born in Warsaw, Poland but married French Pierre Curie and died in Savoy, France in 1934. The way that How They Croaked described this genius was very detailed, following her in every aspect of her life. Marie Curie was obsessed with science. To her, science was more important than money, sleeping, eating and people; except for her husband, Pierre Curie, her lab buddy. She was born in Poland, and her "life theory" was to work slowly, never forget anything and not to make and mistakes. She attended the Sorbonne in France because in that time college for girls in Poland did not exist. There she met a fellow scientist called Pierre Curie; they got married and had two daughters, but Marie spent more time with radium and sodium than with her children. Marie did not stop working with the glowing radium day and night for almost nine years. Pierre and Marie Curie won the Nobel Peace Prize in physics together with Antoine Henri Bacquerel, but Pierre could hardly walk and Marie had lost 15 pounds, had black fingertips and a dusted face. Pierre Curie died when a horse-cart sped over him, and Marie finally died after 66 years of age due to the continuous exposure to radiation. This is an example of how Georgia Bragg described thoroughly the details of the person's life, but not too many of them. This books is not only recommended thanks to it's many details, but also because it can have various uses. Either as an enjoyment book or to do a project, How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg is probably my favorite nonfiction book that I have read so far.
review 2: The author in a very entertaining, yet basically respectful, way tells how a number of well known people died. She managed to find fascinating facts on all of them. This is the perfect "oooo-GROSS" book to give reluctant readers. It actually works pretty well for Common Core as well, since it covers nonfiction from a bit of an interdisciplinary point of view. A lot of this is anatomy and medical history, but a lot of nonscientific history gets covered as well. The author throws in a bunch of somewhat related trivia at the end of each chapter which makes the focus even broader. There is a rather fascinating timeline at the end showing the often tangental connections the famous people had to each other. The hands down winner for connections was Napoleon. Wait till you read just why he likely always had his hand in his jacket when painted! She also gives readers a deep sense of gratitude for living now, in the age of germ theory and antibiotics instead of when most of these people died, the exception being the two scientists who finish up the gruesome parade, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein. Highly recommended. less

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