Customer Reviews

Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World

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This is a great book. A current trend in popular history is to write histories of great people who achieved success but who are not household names (consider the book "Longitude"); Paul Collins turns this idea on its head by writing the stories of 13 people whose ideas, frankly, did not have a lot of merit, but who were famous in their day.

The title story, Banvard's Folly, tells the tale of the artist John Banvard -- world famous in the 1850s, but utterly forgotten today, whose great moving panorama of the Mississippi River made him rich, but who ultimately was destroyed competing with P.T. Barnum.

Other stories include "The Man With N-Ray Eyes", which relates how a French scientist believes erroneously that he has found a new source of radiation; "A.J. Pleasonton's Blue Light Special", which discusses the 1870s fad concerning the healing properties of light reflected through blue glass, and numerous others, including the story of a Shakepeare forger, a woman's quest to prove Shakespeare's works were written by Francis Bacon and others, and the development of the pneumatic train.

The book is a little sad, because each of the characters really believes in their ideas, even though they are rejected by society. But instead of a happy ending, these stories all end badly for the protagonists -- they end up mocked and forgotten.

The book is remarkable for its scholarship -- researching the forgotten intellectual and cultural history of a previous century is no easy task; but Mr. Collins brings the reader back into the culture of the times easily. The stories are entertaining and very amusing.

BanvardŐs Folly is a lovingly-researched tribute to the forgotten, the mistaken, and the discredited. The book profiles 13 historical figures, many of whom were among the most well-known figures of their day. Each, however, pursued his or her genius to a historical dead end, and their reputations and achievements have long since vanished into obscurity. Although each of these profiles is ultimately a study in failure, these ill-fated individuals demonstrate a brilliance, eccentricity, or audacity that is often breathtaking. CollinsŐ subjects may be failures, but they are spectacular failures, visionaries and dreamers who failed with an astounding degree of ambition, style, and verve. Exceptional.

"Banvard's Folly" is a wonderful book, thanks to the talents of author Paul Collins. As you have probably gathered by now from other write-ups, this book tells the story of 13 people, once prominent, and now largely forgotten. They each earned inclusion in this book because of a grand failure of some sort. In other hands, this material could have been a tool for ridicule; but Collins strikes just the right tone here. While not forgiving his subjects' excesses or blind spots, he manages to tell their stories with a real sense of empathy. It's obvious that a lot of research went into this volume, but Collins never overpowers the reader with it; each chapter just seems to glide along. If history's lesser lights are of interest to you, you should enjoy this.

I'm not too proud to admit that I started reading this book purely for the schadenfreude. Dreamers whose bold visions go wrong are a reliable source of humor. What surprised me was that I actually felt uplifted by Banvard's Folly. Mr. Collins doesn't go for the cheap shot here. He treats his subjects with affection, as much for their foibles as their nobility. It reminded me of someone who once said of Jeff Koons that it was impossible to tell whether or not he was making fun of his subjects. I think that Collins truly appreciates these characters, even as he chronicles their catastrophes.

I absolutely loved this book. Paul Collins takes thirteen chapters of American myth that have been largely forgotten and turns them into an eye opening treatise on the failure of will, the folly of hubris, and the absolute madness of challenging the status quo. Mr. Collins' style leads to frequent laugh out loud asides while telling the story of folks who either succeeded and then lost, had a mad idea that failed (but not for lack of trying), or who had the sheer will to make themselves momentarily inportant only to be swallowed up by the tide of time. Every person and idea profiled was at one time wildly popular or important and each eventually fell from favor for one reason or another. Sometimes it was common sense that triumphed, sometimes fad ran its course, sometimes folks just got too bizarre for accomodation. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting a look into uncommon history. Mr. Collins has done us the favor of rummaging through the musty, dusty, long forgotten bookstacks of some of our most prestigious libraries and he has come up with a winner of a book. Save yourself the moldy lungs and long hours of researching the library basements yourself and read this work.

This humurous and sympathetic presentation of thirteen lives of historical nobodies is a sheer delight to read. Among his subjects, Collins chose a showman, a forger, a scholar, an imposter, a wannabe actor and several scientists and inventors, not to mention a businessman or two. Some tales are absurd and hilarious, while others are sad and even tragic to a degree. All are well-written and fascinating.

I selected this title to kick off a book club in my library and everyone loved it as much as I did. It is highly recommended.

So maybe I have a bit of a crush on Paul Collins and everything he writes, but truly Banvard's Folly is quite clever. Its been a few years since I first read Banvard's Folly, but I was able to dig up my initial thoughts thanks to shelfari.

Paul Collins is a genius and I love him. If I have children, they will learn history from this book (as I will home school)... these people will all be included in their lessons from when we're studying Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emily Dickinson to Thoreau and the Concord Grape. John Banvard will be discussed when learning about art and art history as well as financial wisdom. We will discuss Delia Bacon in relation to the people she corresponded with as well as when we study Shakespeare... along with her, Coates' adventures as Romeo will be a humorous anecdote to read between plays and the discussion of various acting techniques. This was a fantastic piece of history that I find amazing the world has forgotten. Let's bring these stories back for the future generations! Thank you Paul Collins for bringing them all back to life in the pages of your book.

Now, I do have a child, and true to my word I have written this book into the curriculum I have been creating for her since I discovered I was pregnant. I cannot wait to share these stories with her!

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Although every story was fascinating, some were better told than others. The story of Banvard and blue light therapy were quite absorbing while I also recall shifting in my seat on the airplane trying to stay focused on a few of the others such as the concord grape history. I believe the whole book could have been written to spellbinding success, but I still appreciate the content enough to highly recommend.

This book is filled with windows into the the lives of people who did or tried to do very interesting things, and never had their stories told until now. Very interesting slices of life. Fun to read.

Don't know if I'd give it 5 stars but it's pretty good.