Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World - Tapa blanda

"No writer better articulates our interest in the confluence of hope, eccentricity, and the timelessness of the bold and strange than Paul Collins. [This book is] sublimely odd, frequently funny, and better yet, thrillingly factual." --Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"Though the most profound question is 'What is the meaning of life?' the most human question 'Don't they know how special I am?' Paul Collins knows. Thanks to these fascinating tales, his forgotten attention-seekers must be rolling over in their graves, if only to finally bask in the limelight." --Sarah Vowell, author of Take the Cannoli

"Collins's swift, humorous prose makes for satisfying schadenfreude." --Time Out New York

"[A] lively treatise on eccentricity, flawed genius, and star-crossed obsession." --The Washington Times

"An unqualified success." --The Seattle Times

"A remarkably lucid and entertaining peek into the admittedly strange lives of the characters [Collins] has unearthed . . . A witty meditation on the vagaries of fame and the human drive for validation." --Tucson Weekly

"With crisp prose and engaging storytelling, Collins contemplates the whims of fortune and the foolhardiness of humanity." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Hearteningly strange . . . Stretching the bounds of nonfiction's propensity for weirdness, Collins exhumes little-known figures [and] recounts their perversely inspiring battles against the more logical ways of the world." --The Onion

"The thirteen lives and times to which Collins devotes his considerable scholarship and manifest narrative gifts in Banvard's Folly are the flash-in-the-pan, briefly notable, and long-ignored ones-of-a-kind, who remind us of the nobility and futility, the grandeur and begrudgery of our endeavors. Of Collins's endeavor, however, we can proclaim our permanent thanks and amazement and heartiest welcome." --Los Angeles Times Book Review