Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past and Present

by Adam Begley, Christopher Hitchens (Introduction)

Sometimes all we have is the courage of our convictions. But not all convictions are created equal. In fact, some are downright delusional. And once a foolish notion sinks its teeth into the famous or the powerful, look out–the impact can have profound consequences for the rest of us. So it’s nothing short of gratifying when our most bullheaded and self-righteous leading lights insist on getting their way only to be proven egregiously embarrassingly wrong. From politicians to pontiffs, movie stars to moguls, and artists to inventors, Certitude presents short biographical sketches of notoriously stubborn individuals who were certain they were right–with laughable, disturbing, and often disastrous results.

Earning a place among the greatest historical and contemporary bullheads
•Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican friar who failed to place his own vanities on the bonfire.
•Carry A. Nation, the saloon smasher who didn’t have a temperate bone in her teetotaling body.
•Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, who lacked the deductive reasoning he bestowed on his own creation.
•Joseph Stalin, the hard-line Soviet leader who had a soft spot after all.
•Madonna, the queen of pop, who isn’t just a material She’s embraced Kabbalah and the doctrine of reincarnation–in other words, she’ll be back!

Informative, irreverent, and brilliantly illustrated by the caricaturist Edward Sorel, Certitude is a book for our time.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Humor

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 2009

About the author

Adam Begley was for twelve years the books editor of The New York Observer. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, London Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, England.

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an odd book! I grabbed it at the last minute off the New Book Shelf at the library on my way out; thinking I'd read some snippets of people's lives that made them certain of what they wanted and how they got there. I really love biography and figured this might give me a few ideas of whose to read. Some of my favorite people are in this book, such as Ann Lee and Emma Goldman, but the authors were too flip about it and really made the folks they gave a couple of paragraphs too almost sound nuts instead of certain about what they wanted in life. Weird, is all I can say -- I don't think it even works for an odd hostess gift!

[Hope · Rating 1 out of 5]

The jacket text for this book suggests that it will be funny, and show the dangers of clinging to an idea in the face of contradictory evidence. It fails on both counts, at least for me.

I suspect the authors assumed all that the readers would find a kind of point-and-laugh humor in each tiny biography, just as he did. I didn't really see it, but it was the best I could figure he was going for. This book might be more amusing to someone with the authors sense of humor. I just found it sad.

I was also disappointed to see no references, no bibliography, no evidence of why the author is so certain his take on each person is accurate.

[Brandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice historial footnotes for information junkies, such as myself. Wish it was longer.