How They Met: Famous Lovers, Partners, Competitors, and Other Legendary Duos

by Joey Green

Everyone loves popular biography, especially when served up in concentrated, fact-filled listings, each one enhanced by an eye-catching photograph. How They Met tells the entertaining and often enlightening stories of all those twosomes for whom the total was much more than the sum of their parts. It's an irresistibly insightful celebration of the icons of entertainment, business, and more--from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to Ben and Jerry.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2003

About the author

Joey Green, a former contributing editor to National Lampoon and a former advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson, is the author of more than sixty (yes, sixty) books, including Not So Normal Norbert with James Patterson, Last-Minute Travel Secrets, Last-Minute Survival Secrets, Contrary to Popular Belief, Clean It! Fix It! Eat It!, the best-selling Joey Green's Magic Brands series, The Mad Scientist Handbook series, The Zen of Oz, and You Know You've Reached Middle Age If...—to name just a few.

Joey has appeared on dozens of national television shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, and The View. He has been profiled in the New York Times, People magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, and he has been interviewed on hundreds of radio shows.

A native of Miami, Florida, and a graduate of Cornell University—where he was the political cartoonist on the Cornell Daily Sun and founded the campus humor magazine, the Cornell Lunatic (still publishing to this very day)—Joey lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a compilation book of mini-bios and stories how two came together. The focus of this interesting book is on the famous and some infamous duos, pairs, colleagues, couples, partners, and collabroators throughout time and history. They range from ancient history (Cleopatra & Cesar and Cleopatara & Marc Antony) to recent history (movie stars and celebrities). Some are real life and some are fictional (Romeoe & Juliet and Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson). I was educated about some tht are obscure and/or forgotten (Rubicon & Young and Wells & Farg0). The entries average about 3 pages in length and are overviews with an accent on how they met, hence the title. These mini-narratives are not comprehensive but there is quite a bit of trivial and little known facts at the end of each section.

Overall, this book is a quick read and one may read 7-10 sections in one sitting. I found most of them interesting. Not great but good.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of interesting little bits of useless factoid stuff.

[CC. Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun read! This book is divided up by famous pairs without any kind of rhyme or reason to the placement--there are no sections, just fun stories. I was familiar with only a few of the stories and loved reading how famous people hooked up. Some examples include: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; Binney and Smith (the crayon dudes); Bill Gates and Paul Allen; Hall and Oates; etc. etc. Some of the people were unknown to me but probably because I don't watch lots of TV or live like a Kardashian. I most liked the historical pairings and most disliked the stories of famous actresses/actors and celebrities. Does anyone really care how or why Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold hooked up? No and I suspect neither do Roseanne or Tom themselves.

However, overall, I really enjoyed the book. It is fully bits of trivia so if you're into that sort of thing, you'll like it. It should be read over time, a story or two at a time so they don't all run together. It would make a great gift book for a TV or movie lover or someone who like popular culture.

[Saralyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ended up skipping through and just reading a few stories of people who particularly interested me. Meh.