The Big Sleep: True Tales and Twisted Trivia about Death - Hardcover

Answering our seemingly inexhaustible fascination with death, Orloff and Baker offer a slim compendium of facts, observations, lists, and general oddments. Particularly noteworthy are a point-by-point, chronological guide to the physical effects death wreaks on the unembalmed human corpse, pop quizzes on grave topics, and more euphemisms for death than one could work into a year's worth of conversation without risking characterization as some kind of obsessive. Withall, this is a lighthearted collection of morbid minutiae--similar, perhaps, to the novelty best-seller of many years ago, 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, but definitely more informative. Of course, lots of the information is anecdotal, and the bibliography includes sources mildly fraudulent (e.g., Ripley of "Believe It or Not" fame) and professionally skeptical (e.g., James Randi), but those things indicate the kind of eclectic fun the little book affords. Mike Tribby