![]() ![]() Especially if you watch it from a distance. If it had footnotes for every historical fact it mentions, it would probably be one of the most footnoted books ever written (what do you think those 15.000 notes were for?) But it’s also a humor book, and not because the author makes up humorous events or cracks a joke here or there, but because, well, history and human nature IS funny. Yes, history, it’s a history book, even though a very odd one. ‘ The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody‘ is still one of the bests history books ever written. ![]() Not to mention that it’s one of the best books ever written. It’s a tragedy that Cuppy, crippled with increasing depression and the prospect of eviction from his apartment, committed suicide because his book became an instant best-seller when it got published (1950) just one year after his death. Then I read that it took Cuppy 16 years and 15.000 notes to write that book (and he didn’t even finish it,) so I decided to do something else with my time. I began collecting notes and writing little encyclopedic articles about, well, everything I could, in a style that combined (or tried) Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary‘s sarcasm and Cuppy’s own brand of comparatively more light-hearted humor. ![]() I was 19 or so the first time I read ‘ The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody,’ by Will Cuppy (1884-1949,) and I was so in love with it I decided to write something similar. “He had the haunted look of the true humorist. “Peter emancipated the Russian women, except those in his own family. ![]()
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