Customer Reviews

How to Become Extinct

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Very funny if you like dry humor. Had me laughing out loud. Fishing "advice" covers topics from minnows and carp to salmon and pike. Additional chapters on Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and Insects. "The Salmon have strange ideas; they are afraid of parsley and slices of lemon." "Aristotle's discovery that snakes and fish have no feet is a keen bit of observation for an ancient Greek." One can sense that Carlin and Seinfeld took some lessons from Cuppy's observational humor.

This book nearly escaped my knowledge. What I mean is, my parents were about to donate it before I had ever heard of it. Preventing them from doing so may be one the best things that has ever happened to me. I couldn't resist the book simply from the title, and the rest of the book is just as funny (whether or not it actually holds the instructions for the extinction process). As another review states, very dry humour. I once wrote a note to myself saying, "Remember: if you want to laugh out loud, read How to Become Extinct." And it's true.

This one is mostly about fish, reptiles, and Aristotle, not necessarily in that order. (You will find Aristotle under reptiles.) Plus snippets about some of the animals that have mastered the art of extinction, such as the dodo, "the ultimate in extinction," which "seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct." And if you are thinking of adding a snake to your family circle, Cuppy gives you a few points to consider before making that kind of commitment. In general, he is against making pets of snakes, but concedes that he might not have met the right snake. He also discusses insects, whether they are winning, whether they will eventually wipe us humans off the map and establish an Insect Age.

Anything by Cuppy is worth reading, and this one is no exception. The text is fact-based and very funny. The illustrations by Steig are first-rate.

Master of the sly satire of scholarship, Cuppy scores again with this volume, a companion to his "How to Tell your Friends from the Apes," "How to Attract the Wombat," and the immortal "The Rise and Fall of Practically Everybody." Cuppy's gentle wit is reminiscent of Robert Benchley's still wondrous lectures on miscellaneous subjects, except that, where Benchley soared into incomparable nonsense, Cuppy's disquisitions seem oddly based in fact and research. That juxtaposition of serious flummery creates wry martinis. And nobody ever used the academic convention of footnotes to such hilarious effect. Buy and laugh.