I've really enjoyed this book. Part of my pleasure came from the fatc that I spotted it in Poundland (£1 for a hardback!). What it is, is a collection of 68 short biographies over 10 chapters. The oddity is that instead of dividing the chapters into subjects like "Scientists", "Sportsmen", etc it uses "more diverting categories". Eg "There's Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life", covering people who had bad childhoods; "Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone", about people with unusual diets; and "Is That All There Is?" about people interested in the after life.
Many of the people are very well known (Da Vinci, Freud, Isaac Newton, etc); some I had heard of before but didn't know much about (Epicurus, Edward Jenner, William Morris, etc); some were just names and it was good to know a bit about who they were (Mary Seacole, Colette, John Dee); others I had never heard of (Archibald Belaney, Fernando Pessoa, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, etc). I've already forgotten who some of them are but all in all it was quite interesting, each biography dealing really only with the interesting bits. More info here.
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