[.ca] Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (ISBN 075093204X)

the funniest history book ever written:
I must have read this book twenty times at least, and I never get tired of it. Every time it seems just as funny, as Will Cuppy tells us about the lives of historical characters, from Cheops ( or khufu) through to Catherine the Great, taking in such diverse characters as Cleopatra, Attila the hun, Lady Godiva, henry the eight, John Smith, and miles Standish. His wonderful dry comments are hilarious, as on Charlemagne who was born in the dark ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally the are like they are now'Or on the American revolution , started because the colonists had to pay takes to which their consent had not been asked ' today we pay taxes but our consent has been asked, and we have told the government to go ahead and tax us all they want to. We like it'This is a sublime book, the one I'd take with me to a desert island if i had to choose only one.

man, will cuppy...:
is amazing. please do yourselves a favor and run out and read this book. right now. I'm serious. it's for your own good. and when you've finished it and love it as much as I do, you can send me flowers and thank you cards, because I did you the great favor of recommending that you read it. you better be buying it already. right now. stop reading this and hurry up. you're welcome. d <3

Will Cuppy is to history what Mad Magazine is to literature:
By page two I felt cheated. It is poorly written, in a smirking quasi-intellectual style that is neither funny nor educational. This is an awful book. Don't buy it unless you have an off balance table and you need something just this size to slip under the table leg.

Good? You have got to be kidding me, right?:
Well, I hate to go against the flow of all the glowing reviews about Mr. Cuppy's book, but you have go to be kidding me! I love history. I love sarcasm if it's done in moderation (and not proffered in the mindless "Friends" sitcom-like way). I love parody. I love learning about the human side of life. But this thing, this beast, this pretension of a book? What drugs are you on? I'm giving this book two stars because Mr. Cuppy manages to use English language and grammar in a reasonably literate fashion. But, please, talk about thuddingly ham fisted. If you like the fey humor the New Yorker dishes up on a bad day; if you like inscrutable comic rhythms such as the old NBC Dave Letterman show had with Brother Theodore (come to think of it, the new CBS Dave Letterman still has inscrutable comic rhythms) this might be for you but to me Mr. Cuppy's droll little footnotes and attempts at tongue in cheek humor are just insufferable. E.g., "I heard different." "It goes to show you never know." "Pronounced Chumley."??? Oh, dammit, I'm ROFLMAO! Not! Imagine a Yalie, Princeton or Harvard man droning on about something of infinite gest (well, of infinite gest only to them) in that "piping" tone of voice and (shudder). Well you get the point. Awful.

Funny and true!:
This is one of my favorite books to give to people who need a good laugh. Mr Cuppy writes with a very dry sense of humor, and knowing the intensity of his scholarship and research makes this all the more funny, because it's true! Don't miss the footnotes; they're the best part of this book.