It turns out Beethoven's hair helped uncover how he died. And he had long hair just like a rock star. He performed for kings, he did concert tours, and he had a lot of fans. He played his first gig when he was eight years old. Practice paid off for Beethoven and he became a musical genius. We don't know what tunes Beethoven practiced, but today, kids are forced to play Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata, melodies that Beethoven wrote. 'It's icky, but hopefully it will make it sticky, too.'īeethoven's dad forced him to practice the piano, like dads have done since the dawn of music. 'Hopefully it will make history sticky,' she says. I'm trying to turn history upside down and see if we can get some of the connections of culture and science and medicine together in a different way.'Īs for what the book will accomplish, Bragg says that she hopes that her nauseating stories will turn young readers on to more historical explorations. 'I don't tell these stories to frighten kids. 'It is sad, but it is a bitter comic truth, that we all are going to be heading that way,' she continues. They are ground up poisonous beetles, that when they are placed on the skin, the skin blisters up and then pops.' They gave him the blister beetle treatment. His doctors drained half the blood out of his body. 'Antibiotics would have saved George Washington at that time. She lives in Los Angeles.īragg says several times in the book that modern treatments could have prevented some of the terrible deaths that she chronicles.

Georgia Bragg is the author of the middle-grade novel Matisse on the Loose. We might as well meet them where their interests are and it might get them more interested in history and other parts about these famous people's lives.' When asked whether 'little kids' have the appetites to read about disgusting deaths, Bragg says, 'My target audience is around 10 to 12 to older. One's first reaction when reading it - as was the case with Weekend Edition host Linda Wertheimer - tends to be, 'gross!' But as Wertheimer says, 'Perhaps that's the point of this delightful and disgusting sliver of history.' She spoke with Bragg about her macabre collection and why we can't look away when it comes to famous deaths.īragg opens the book with a warning: 'If you don't have the guts for gore, do not read this book.' Of course, it is not a book for the fainthearted. Author Georgia Bragg has gathered the gory stories behind the last days of 19 famous figures, all in one cleverly illustrated book. How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous is a new book we really needed. How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous

How they croaked book