The Dead Guy Interviews

Book excerpt: Ever wanted to ask Nostradamus for the winning lotto numbers or Napoleon about his complex? How about Van Gogh about the whole ear episode, or if Frida might consider a brow wax? Michael Stusser has done it for you in this book of imagined Q&A interviews with 45 of the most celebrated, notorious, and dead people in history. Based on his column in the popular and acclaimed magazine, “Mental Floss,” this collection of conversations is incredibly funny, but the bulk of the content is based on serious research, so in addition to laughing, you’re actually learning real history. Subjects include Alexander the Great, Buddha, Caligula, Winston Churchill, Salvador Dali, Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Sigmund Freud, J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Houdini, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde, and dozens more. These guys might not have a pulse, but boy, can they talk.