Book Review of: The Dead Guy Interviews

Conversations with 45 of the most accomplished, notorious, and deceased personalities in history

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Reviewer: Mark Lamendola, author of over 6,000 articles.

Michael A. Stusser's book is creative, informative, and entertaining. Saying that Stusser is a clever an capable writer is like saying Eric Clapton is "good on the guitar." Stusser has a way with not just words but composition as well.

Stusser is also a capable and industrious researcher. As a history buff, I was already familiar with most of the people he "interviewed" for this book and quite familiar with some. Yet, I learned several new things about each one.

If you'd like to learn about some of the more influential (or simply interesting) characters in history, you will want to get this book. The format--a fictional interview--makes it much easier to read than a simple dry reciting of facts. The triple-layer wittiness of this book doesn't exactly hurt, either....

In the fictional interviews, Stusser plays the role of the sometimes stumbling interviewer. The interviewees variously insult him, make him wait, or take umbrage at a remark that wasn't intended to offend. These little riffs are funny. But so are the ones where Stusser updates some long-dead person on how we do things today. The way he carries it off makes me guffaw.

Sometimes, Stusser will pose an embarrassing question or ask the interviewee to explain some paradox, hypocrisy, or colossal blunder. The replies are in character, and you can hear this person deliver the retort. Sometimes, the replies are funny because the interviewee still doesn't get it. Sometimes, they are funny because the reply seems to go over the interviewer's head. Stusser the author lets Stusser the interviewer be clueless, sometimes. You just have to laugh.

My top three picks for "best interview" are:

• Albert Einstein
• Sigmund Freud
• J. Edgar Hoover

That's not to say the other 42 are slouchers. They aren't. Some of them are real gems. The other 42 "interviews" are of:

• Alexander the Great
• Beethoven
• Napoléon Bonaparte
• Buddha
• Julius Caesar
• Caligula
• George Washington
• George Washington Carver
• Catherine the Great
• Winston Churchill
• Cleopatra
• Confucius
• Crazy Horse
• Salvador Dalí
• Charles Darwin
• Emily Dickinson
• Benjamin Franklin
• Genghis Khan
• Vincent van Gogh
• Henry VIII
• Harry Houdini
• Thomas Jefferson
• Joan of Arc
• Robert Johnson
• Frida Kahlo
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Abraham Lincoln
• Mao Tse-tung
• Karl Marx
• Michelangelo
• Montezuma
• Mozart
• Nostradamus
• Edgar Allan Poe
• William Shakespeare
• Sun Tzu
• Mae West
• Oscar Wilde

If you'd like to liven up a holiday party or some other kind of get-together, here's an idea. Have people study a character from history and then be interviewed as that character (preferably by a slightly aggressive reporter).

If that seems like too much work, then just use this book as a script and do a couple of short skits from it. See if you can get the right gestures and accents to go with the snarly replies. Maybe even wear period costumes and use props (the more ridiculous, the better). You'll have a blast. And if that seems like too much work, then just read this book. You'll get some easy laughs and learn some things, too.