Publishers Weekly
02/27/2023
Mathematician Spalding takes some of history’s most lauded savants down a notch in this gut-busting survey. Combining solid academic research with bawdy humor, Spalding portrays each so-called “genius” in a series of embarrassing vignettes, such as the time Napoleon Bonaparte’s chief of staff released thousands of tame rabbits into a field for a celebratory hunt. Instead of fleeing from Napoleon and his generals, the rabbits “hopp merrily towards them.... Hoping for some snuggles and snacks” and eventually causing the hunters to “beat a hasty retreat.” Elsewhere, Spalding ascribes Sigmund Freud’s conviction that “the universe was sending him messages through the appearance of various numbers” to his prolific cocaine habit, notes that enthusiastic sailor Albert Einstein’s inability to swim or sail proficiently required rescuers to continually fish him out of the water along the northeastern seaboard, recounts how Benjamin Franklin pranked his dinner guests by electrifying their wine glasses, and details Thomas Edison’s plans for a “spirit phone” that could allow people to communicate with the dead. Full of jaw-dropping anecdotes and valuable history lessons, this is a delight. (May)
From the Publisher
"Author Katie Spalding is a kind of Bill Nye on steroids, making arcane science fascinating and fun...Katie Spalding is one of those annoyingly talented writers. Funny, and with an absurd amount of obscure knowledge, Edison's Ghosts is a must-read on how everyone is much, much stupider than they make out."—James Felton, author of Assholes: The Dead People You Should Be Mad at
“With wit and charm, each of Katie Spalding’s stories in Edison’s Ghosts nudges, pushes, and eventually shoves some of our most illustrious celebrity thinkers right off their pedestals. Whether it was learning how Pythagorus died from an ill-timed fascination with beans, the career derailing procrastination of Leonardo Da Vinci, the truly impressive-in-its magnitude gullibility of Arthur Conan Doyle, or the failed attempt of the titular Edison to create a phone for calling ghosts, this warts-and-all review of the human, the very silly human, side history’s most famous “geniuses” will fuel your dinner party conversations for years.” —David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart
“Edison's Ghosts is a masterful combination of historical research and comedic storytelling, infused with erudition and judiciously dropped F-bombs. I laughed out loud on nearly every page. It is truly inspiring to read about the stupidity of geniuses. Thank you, Katie, for knocking these wunderkinds down a few pegs and making the rest of us feel smarter in the process.”—Justin Gregg, author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal
“Edison's Ghosts is a lighthearted and amusing account of some of history's most influential people. Even the brightest minds can produce some truly dim moments and this book doesn't hold back.”—Nick Caruso, New York Times bestselling author of Does it Fart?
"Full of jaw-dropping anecdotes and valuable history lessons, this is a delight."—Publishers Weekly
“From Pythagoras to Yukio Mishima, first-time author Spalding delivers consistently lively, witty excursions into the sometimes-weird lives and beliefs of the famous…An entertaining and informative collection.” —Kirkus Review
“An extremely entertaining book...The Leonardo chapter left me helpless with mirth and the Karl Marx one brilliantly tells my favorite "Karl Marx gets pissed” anecdote better than any version I've ever seen. Smart and hilarious."—Otto English, author of FAKE HISTORY
"Such a great idea I wish I’d come up with it first. One of those books that makes you laugh so much you forget you’re learning stuff."—Jonn Elledge, author of The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything
“Wow. It’s rare I pick up a book, read the first page, and immediately know I’m going to love it … I’ve already recommended this book to so many people and when it’s released, I want to drop off a copy to my high school history teacher. You can tell how much research went into each story and what a natural storyteller Dr. Spalding is. I’m a fan for life, I’ll be first in line for whatever comes next…”—The Bookloft (Great Barrington, MA)
“Until now I thought "enjoyable science book" was an oxymoron. Spalding proved me wrong. I learned a lot and had fun doing it. Turns out a spoonful of snark helps the factoids go down — in a most delightful way.”—The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[T]here’s something hopeful about a book setting out to tell us that our fabled geniuses were weirdos and goofballs. It supposes that greatness is still real enough to need demystifying. Spalding teases her subjects because, most of the time, she wants to express what was admirable about them.”—Air Mail
"When you’re sitting down to read a book by someone with a PhD in mathematics, you don’t expect it to be fun from cover-to-cover, let alone flat-out funny. In fact – and I know that the fine folks at Hachette won’t be able to use this in a blurb – but Dr. Spalding’s book is fucking hilarious!"—Anthony Bergen, author of Tributes and Trash Talk
author of Assholes: The Dead People You Should James Felton
Katie Spalding is one of those annoyingly talented writers. Funny, and with an absurd amount of obscure knowledge, Edison's Ghosts is a must-read on how everyone is much, much stupider than they make out.
author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal Justin Gregg
Edison's Ghosts is a masterful combination of historical research and comedic storytelling, infused with erudition and judiciously dropped F-bombs. I laughed out loud on nearly every page. It is truly inspiring to read about the stupidity of geniuses. Thank you, Katie, for knocking these wunderkinds down a few pegs and making the rest of us feel smarter in the process.
New York Times bestselling author of Does it Fart? Nick Caruso
“Edison's Ghosts is a lighthearted and amusing account of some of history's most influential people. Even the brightest minds can produce some truly dim moments and this book doesn't hold back.
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-08
A cheeky tour of history’s brightest and most peculiar people.
From Pythagoras to Yukio Mishima, first-time author Spalding delivers consistently lively, witty excursions into the sometimes-weird lives and beliefs of the famous. The author writes that Leonardo da Vinci was a compulsive quitter, someone who would take on big commissions and money and then leave, sometimes coming back up to years later to finish or not. “Even his most famous work, the Mona Lisa, he never finished—he took it with him to France and insisted until his death that there was still more to do before it was complete,” writes the author. Meanwhile, Galileo “utterly fail[ed] to read the room” when it came to inquisitions about the center of the universe. Descartes was a “weirdo celebrity heretic pseudo-refugee who had a weakness for cross-eyed women, weed and conspiracy theories.” Besides his physics, Isaac Newton was “literally looking for the Philosopher’s Stone,” poking his eye with a needle and blind for three days after staring at the sun too long. “You really wouldn’t want to hang out with Karl Marx,” writes Spalding, as he was a bit of a bruiser and drunkard. Besides finding and cataloging animals, the always hungry Charles Darwin would then eat them. Sigmund Freud was “more responsible for cocaine’s use as a recreational drug than any other person in history.” Thomas Edison was a “sort of proto-Elon Musk” who believed his “Spirit Phone” could reach the dead, and though Einstein loved sailing, “he was terrible at it.” There are only a few women included: Émilie du Châtelet, a “scientific genius” in the 1700s who studied math and dueled a man in her underwear; Ada Lovelace; Marie Curie; and Maya Angelou, whose life was “bonkers” in a good way. Others scrutinized by Spalding include Confucius, Napoleon, Mozart, Franklin, Byron, and Hemingway. Don’t miss the footnotes; they’re a hoot.
An entertaining and informative collection.
