5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Morbidly delightfully, endlessly informative, June 3, 2009
This review is from: This Will Kill You: A Guide to the Ways in Which We Go (Paperback)
This is a great little read--informative, irreverently funny, somewhat horrifying. Includes helpful cartoons. A wonderful asset if you're a writer, a horror fan, or just a trivia and reference lover. Also would be a great gift for the person in your life who has a morbid sense of humor.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A witty and informative guide to the myriad ways in which we enter the Void, October 3, 2009
This review is from: This Will Kill You: A Guide to the Ways in Which We Go (Paperback)
HP Newquist and Rich Maloof have coauthored this little-known gem of a book which plays off something every person possesses to a certain degree: morbid curiosity. Humans are both repelled and fascinated by the subject of death, and the dual-aspect of this tendency lies at the core of the book. The authorial tone is equal parts wittiness and sober reflection on the grisly realities that we as humans must learn to face. The back of the book says that the content is "irreverent," but I think nothing could be further from the truth. If the authors laugh, it is not a laugh of defiance or of superiority. Rather, being oh-so-human themselves, they know that they are just as susceptible as the rest of humankind is to the things they explain in quite some detail in their book. The book IS very amusing, no doubt, but it gallows humor through and through. And this is the key to the work - they are not prison wardens laughing in the face of dangerous prisoners who are unable to harm them. Rather, they function similarly to Virgil in Dante's Inferno: they lead us down on a tour through the hellish fates that potentially await us at some point in the foggy future. Only this time Virgil has a great sense of humor to help prevent us from being overwhelmed by the horror before our eyes.
I make this sound dramatic, but it really isn't. For all the grimness of the material, it has one advantage: the lightness which comes with accepting inevitability. This is reflected somewhat in the book's structure. This is not one single narrative work, but a long series of short chapters, each devoted to a certain potential death. Chapters on average are a mere 3-4 pages in length, making this book ideal for short spurts of reading. If you are one of those people who likes to enjoy literature on the toilet, or in the bathtub, or while waiting in line at the post office, or while waiting outside your child's school to pick this up, you'll find that this becomes your best friend. But it is also enjoyable in long sessions. I gulped this book down in three days when I first got it... and I'm a slow reader!
The authors do a good job of balancing more gritty, day-to-day reality type of stuff like heart attacks, seizures, stabbing, and HIV/AIDS with much less common fates (note, for instance, that the book has chapters on what happens when a space suit malfunctions, what happens when you go over the Niagara Falls in a barrel, and what happens when you become the snack of a Komodo Dragon). The main portion of the book is introduced by a foreword and an introduction, both of which are worth reading. Perhaps the most appreciated touch in the book is an inclusion called "two-minute med school" where the authors explain all of the medical jargon they use throughout the rest of the book (specific causes of death in each scenario are explored very thoroughly).
Each chapter ends with a set of subsections which give information on a) what a scenario is termed scientifically, b) the medical cause(s) of death, c) the time you should reasonably expect to be killed if such a scenario were to occur, d) the types of people most likely to die in this manner, e) the overall statistical lethality of the situation, f) kills per annum, g) overall historical death toll that can be attributed to that scenario, h) well-known people who have perished in those circumstances, i) a subjective "horror factor" rating on how horrific such a death is, and j) "grim facts," which are little asides which couldn't be reasonably included in the main entry but are still interesting and still pertain to the method of death.
Credit must also be given to Jim Shinnick for the frequently hysterical illustrations he provides throughout the book.
This is the best find I've made in a long time. I very randomly happened to stumble across this in a bookstore, and it was love at first sight. Highly recommended to anyone with an overpowering curiosity and a strong stomach.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
educational, entertaining, and fantastically addictive, May 19, 2010
This review is from: This Will Kill You: A Guide to the Ways in Which We Go (Paperback)
This book was so good I keep searching for more. And unlike most books, once you finish it, it's still useful to have around as a reference, and doesn't sit pointlessly on a shelf gathering dust. Highly recommend!
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