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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