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Book Review: The Eccentropedia – Author Chris Mikul

The Eccentropedia: The Most Unusual People Who Have Ever Lived – Author Chris Mikul

Those eccentric enigmas of past, present and future…you’re bound to have heard of one or the other over the course of life’s journey. What is it that makes them so intriguing that warrants a place within our culture? The book is titled “The Eccentropedia” from the creative minds at HeadPress.

Written by Chris Mikul with a fine smattering of illustrations by Glenn Smith, you now have the means to learn about life’s special group of artisans, weirdos, participants, visionaries and contributors to histories creative culture.. Authors, artists, poets, and inventors are just a few of the types that make up this fat-page-filled book.

HeadPress has a knack for putting out these editions of interesting people. And by no means a quick read, there is alot to ponder over here. I’ll confess that my experience reading this book was one of educating my own cultural background. While I can say that a few of the names were familiar to me such as H.P Lovecraft, Howard Hughes, and Salvador Dalí, there were many here that I had not run across in my circle of learning. The edition claims the inclusion of a range from bad poets to “transsexual evolutionary theorists”. What is that exactly? You’ve come to the right source!

Interesting folks to say the least, “The Eccentropedia” gives us just enough material to look up and indulge further on our own. Maybe your like me,…you know the name “Oscar Wilde”, but you’ve never really taken the time to find out why he is important to our own culture. Well, this edition takes itself a bit more direct to the collective of odd folks rather than just awarding a dictionary of great artists. Nope, while figures such as Francis Bacon, John Lennon and the Dalai Lama seem to missing , instead we find folks like “The Leatherman”, Tiny Tim, and Tom Leppard (the tattooed Leopard man). Perhaps you’ve always wondered why Andy Warhol was such an enigma or why Screaming Lord Sutch was so into his horror genre?

Talents include the likes of William Blake, Divine, Liberace, Aleister Crowley and even the most publicized weirdo of them all ….Michael Jackson. With the noted also comes the lesser known eccentrics and that is what makes this edition so compelling. Each entry is well described bringing us the most important facts to review. Just enough to learn about the mysterious personalities we are given pages of entries, many with well illustrated images of the focal figures themselves.

The collective lists a fascinating narration of some of the most interesting persons to ever have graced our planet. To further that classification, we have the eccentrics, the brilliant minds and/or misunderstood personas who have all come together under one edition. Mikul has done the work in presenting them for all to see like a much circus sideshow of historical contributors.

A fine edition to any reader’s library, this just might be the “perfect” coffee table book for visiting and curious minds. A great collective of oddity personas and people who remind us why we need them in our culture to keep it interesting. Totaling in at 528 pages, this is must read. The edition comes in both soft cover and hardback editions.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=113

Book Review: The Eccentropedia – Author Chris Mikul

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