Margaret Nicholas

A collection of vignettes on various eccentrics and mad people. There was little new on all these cranks and crackpots but many of them make good company so I was happy to revisit their eccentricities.

This time, "The World's ..." team tackle the wealthiest losers in the world. Many of the usual suspects are covered (Howard Hughes, Barbara Hutton, J. Paul Getty and a bunch of other people who inherited vast wealth), along with dictator Baby Doc Duvalier and dictator's wife Imelda Marcos, and others not so well known, including a few that seem to be just space fillers.

Weirdly, the back page of my copy of The World's Wealthiest Losers highlights the incredibly wealthy Russian nobleman who show more thought he had lost everything in the Russian Revolution only to remember that he owned a chateau in France (I know how he feels; I'm forever forgetting about my French chateaux and I'm sure you're the same) but the story does not actually appear in the book. Shame. show less

This is an interesting book, but it seems to go with the most scandalous interpretations instead of straight facts. I got this book because of the section on Elizabeth Bathory, and it states as fact that she bathed in blood and drank blood, neither of which were ever confirmed.

I recommend this book when you don't want to get yourself deep into a novel. It's a great book for when you are out and about but feel the need to bring a book along. The stories are short enough that you can read one in a very short time.

I found the stories fascinating, very interesting.