NEAL THOMPSON is the critically acclaimed author of Light This Candle, Driving with the Devil, and Hurricane Season and has contributed to such publications as Outside, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons. You can find him at www.nealthompson.com.
"Deliriously entertaining...In Thompson's vivid rendering, LeRoy
Robert Ripley (1890-1949) leads a life best described as
Horatio-Alger-as-directed-by-Preston-Sturges-at-his-madcap-best...At
the peak of his popularity, 'Believe It Or Not' had more than 80
million readers and received around two million fan letters a
month. Meanwhile, Ripley's personal life was as overstuffed as his
professional one, as he compulsively collected objects, pets, and
mistresses to fill his grand 28-room mansion...Reading A Curious
Man, it's easy to see the hunger into which Ripley tapped still
raging...his comics feel akin to one's inaugural adventures into
YouTube, particularly in its early days. The novelty or even
extremity is not the true appeal-instead, it's the experience.
Random discovery. Each link leading to other links, creating a
simulacrum of worlds both remarkably similar and different from our
own."
--Megan Abbott, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The life story of Robert 'Believe It or Not!' Ripley is as
intriguing as the many oddities in which he
delighted."
--Entertainment Weekly
"An engaging, fast-moving biography...makes the case that Ripley
was among the first media celebrities, and that his affection for
the grotesque and the extreme shaped American pop
culture."
--Columbus Dispatch
"Robert Ripley was as unique and fascinating as the 'Believe It
or Not' newspaper feature that made him one of the most popular and
widely read syndicated cartoonists in the country during the 1930s,
and Thompson delivers an equally fascinating biography that
captures the influence of Ripley's work life then and now, well
into the age of television and the Internet ....Thompson superbly
shows how Ripley's work is the basis for today's more extreme
reality shows by teaching readers 'to gape with respect at the
weirdness of man and nature.'"
--Publishers Weekly
"Thompson paints a picture of Ripley as a brilliant but
aggressively eccentric man, a globe-trotting curiosity seeker who
always believed there was something even more unusual just around
the corner. A Curious Man is a fine introduction to a man
who, for most of us, has been merely the name above a famous
title."
--Booklist
"Ripley's amazing American life itself plays out like an
impossible fairy tale."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Robert Ripley's life is just as weird and riveting as a
two-headed snake or an 8,000 rubber band ball. And Neal Thompson
has told the story brilliantly in this book. What's truly
unbelievable is that it's taken us so long to get a full-fledged
biography of this great American character, a man who tapped into
our fascination with bizarre non-fiction and who can rightly claim
to be the godfather of Reality TV. It was worth the wait."
-A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The
Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically
"A Curious Man is the rollicking, terrific story of one
of America's greatest men...Ripley brought back to an awed
nation the richness of an endlessly exotic world, and Neal
Thompson tells the story with a perfectly-pitched sense of what
makes such a man, and a nation, tick."
--Peter Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The
Dog Stars
"The breathtaking life of a quintessential American: a
Frankenstein monster stitched together with equal parts genius,
bravado, insecurity, and propaganda. A master of oddities,
Ripley himself was the purest form of his own collection and Neal
Thompson is his wondrous exhibitor."
--Brad Meltzer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The
Inner Circle
"Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that the history of a time can be
resolved in the biography of a few stout and earnest people. Robert
Ripley was certainly one of those and, in this fascinating account,
Neal Thompson rescues for us a colorful slice of history."
-Colum McCann, bestselling author of Let the Great World
Spin
"Anyone who wants to understand America needs to read this
book...Neal Thompson gives us a vivid portrait of this complex,
restless man in all his maniacally conflicted glory."
--Ben Fountain, Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award and author of the
National Book Award Finalist Billy Lynn's Long Halftime
Walk
"Intelligent and gripping...Neal Thompson expertly captures
the surprisingly complex character of Robert Ripley, and a life
nearly too fantastic to be believed."
--Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City and
American Rose
"Neal Thompson has written the book many writers dream of - the
Great American rags-to-riches story-and done it in an intoxicating
way. The story of the man who created 'Ripley's Believe It Or
Not' is a rip-roaring tale of head-shaking amazement."
-- Marc J. Seifer, author of Wizard: The Life & Times of
Nikola Tesla
"In a way that I'm not sure I was expecting, the book builds real
sadness into the considerable momentum of its narrative. Neal
Thompson constructs an elegant argument: the world Ripley created
is the world in which we now live."
--David Shields, New York Times bestselling author of The
Thing About Life Is that One Day You'll Be Dead
"A Curious Man is a work of real beauty and fun and
emotion -- and intense readability. It is a single-session
book, one of those that takes your clock and renders it mute until
the book has had its say. Thompson is the genuine article: smart
and witty, empathetic and a pleasure to read."
--Darin Strauss, bestselling author of Half a Life and
Chang and Eng
"For the first time anywhere, Neal Thompson brings us
Ripley in all his gaudy glory, crafting a hardboiled Horatio Alger
story for a media-obsessed age."
-Tom Reiss, New York Times bestselling author of The
Black Count and The Orientalist
"Like Robert Ripley, Neal Thompson has a nose for the strange
and wonderful. A Curious Man is a rich, compelling read for
fans of the exotic and uncanny."
--Stewart O'Nan, bestselling author of The Odds
"A biography of a man who was as unusual as the items he
collected...An outstanding work...I couldn't pull myself
away."
--Frank Brady, bestselling author of Endgame: Bobby Fischer's
Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the
Edge of Madness
"Ripley's life turns out to have been as weird as his facts. A
fun but also compelling read that lingers in an unexpected
way."
--John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
"Believe it! Neal Thompson has written the definitive biography
of the larger-than-life Robert L. Ripley, the father of our
minutiae-mad modern society."
--Ken Jennings, all-time Jeopardy! champ and bestselling
author of Maphead and Because I Said So
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