Lois's Reviews > Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

If Trivial Pursuit, a game invented for people who never got picked in gym, ever comes back in style, I want Mo Rocca on my team. He knows more trivia, is able to rattle off more facts, and has never met ephemora that he didn't love.

I became addicted to his podcasts, Mobituaries, last year. Each episode was a gem of lost history drawn out to a full show, filled with fun facts and lesser known minutiae about things that have gone before. Two of the most popular were the history of Chang and Eng Bunker, the celebrated Siamese twins who ended up as attractions in popular "Freak" shows, and a beautiful piece on ethereal beauty and 1960s icon, Audrey Hepburn. Beyond her beauty, however, is a pure soul and a tragic story lived in Nazi occupied Europe that shaped her character for the rest of her life.

While I am most interested in the show business trivia he shares (I was thrilled that he addressed what we call in my house characters who, "Went to the attic", i.e. characters who perhaps are not popular with the audience and are sent into oblivion or characters like Chuck Cunningham, the older brother of Richie (Happy Days) Cunningham, who was faded away when the Fonz became the break-out star of the show and the surrogate brother to Richie and Joanie.

I did read this book in a Kindle Advanced Reader's Copy from Eidelweiss/Above the Treeline. It's a great way for a librarian to get a jump on upcoming titles but sometimes does the book a disservice because the text lacks formatting, chapter divisions, and has weirdly variant type fonts. I think it might be easier to read and enjoy the book when it comes out in its finished form. I will happily volunteer to read it again because it's, well, fun.

This is the kind of book that your spouse will not have to read because they've heard most of it read out loud, prefaced by the words, "Hey, listen to this. Did you know....."

You may actually learn some facts about the Founding Father (especially the fact that no one liked Thomas Paine who was a little too revolutionary even for American rebels). Mostly, prepare for hours of learning gems of information and hearing how the author lived in his 70's and on coming of age. He touches on his own experiences as a gay kid growing up in a time when AIDS was the "gay plague" championed only by movie star, Elizabeth Taylor.

I did question one entry in which Mr. Rocca was mentioning famous people with unknown achievements, like actress Hedy Lamarr, a German Jewish actress who held scientific patents that were the beginnings of Wi-Fi. He includes Paul Winchell, who invented an artificial heart among other medical device patents, between doing voiceovers for the Smurfs and Winnie the Pooh. However, to me, an aging Baby Boomer, it is impossible not to discuss Winchell without mentioning his very popular children's TV show in the fifties featuring his ventriloquism with sassy dummy, Jerry Mahoney.

Ah, well, tomato tomahto. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, can't wait for season two of the podcast, and an delighted to find a kindred trivia-loving soul in the author. Highly recommended.