by Craig Brown
First published 2012
Craig Brown presents a collection of 101 genuine encounters between famous figures who seem like they should never have crossed paths. The book reveals how Marilyn Monroe actually met Frank Lloyd Wright, how Sergei Rachmaninoff found himself in the same room as Harpo Marx, and how T. S. Eliot encountered Groucho Marx. Brown documents meetings between Madonna and Martha Graham, Michael Jackson and Nancy Reagan, Tsar Nicholas II and Harry Houdini, plus Nikita Khrushchev and Marilyn Monroe. Each chapter connects to the next through ingenious links that weave these separate moments into a continuous narrative. Brown, praised by Helen Fielding as one of Britain's funniest writers, transforms these historical coincidences into entertaining stories that demonstrate how reality creates stranger combinations than fiction ever could.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: found-family, unlikely-connections
Period: 20th-Century, 21st-Century
384 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster