From Booklist
Some, such as Michelangelo’s or John Bunyan’s last words, sound like family or friends wrote them postmortem; some sound glib (murderer Gary Gilmore’s “Let’s do it”); some despairing (Freud’s “Now it’s nothing but torture and makes no sense anymore”); some cryptic (Smollett’s “All is well, my dear”); some cruelly ironic (Benazir Bhutto’s “Long live Bhutto!”); some fitting (aviation pioneer Georges Chavez’s “Higher. Always higher”); and some planned, such as Archbishop Laud’s more than 100 word public prayer before he was executed. The last words attributed to St. Paul, Rasputin, Oliver Cromwell, Judas Maccabaeus, and other notable historic figures are in dispute, with competing statements recorded, each with its sources cited in this compilation organized A–Z by the speakers’ names. Author Brahms (Notable Last Facts, 2005) honors 3,500-plus of them, introducing each with birth and death dates, a thumbnail biography, and notes about the circumstances in which the last words were written or uttered. In cases where two or more last utterances are attributed to an individual, they are labeled as “Variations” if they are similar, and “Different Last Words” if they are dissimilar. Quotations that are probably bogus are labeled as “Doubtful.” This collection is more eclectically international and includes more entries than Edward Le Comte’s Dictionary of Last Words (1955), with its American and European emphases. Because variant names appear as see references in the body of the book, the index by names verges on redundancy. Brahms provides interesting and sometimes informative final biographical tidbits from the mouths and pens of biblical figures and ancient authors through Frank Sinatra and John Denver. This specialty niche resource complements numerous biographical compendiums that focus on the lives of history’s notable kings, murderers, scientists, artists, politicians, preachers, and more. --James Rettig
