Banvard's Folly: Tales of Thirteen People Who Didn't Change the World

#50Title: Banvard's Folly: Tales of Thirteen People Who Didn't Change the WorldAuthor: Paul Collins
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2002
Genre: Biography
320 pages

An anthology of once-famous, once-infamous, or never famous men (with one exception) who were hot stuff at the time but now are obscure or entirely forgotten. Collins (the author of Not Even Wrong: A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism which I reviewed here) has chosen an interesting assortment of scientists, scammers, and artists to profile. He has an engaging narrative voice and generally is successful in evoking each person and engaging the reader's empathy. I'd have wished for a few more women, but women's historical footprints are often fainter.

I enjoy a variant on word golf that I call "book golf," in which I notice similarities and coincidences across unrelated books that I read randomly in close temporal relation to each other. I also enjoy encountering references to less-known books that I've read. One such in Collins is an offhand reference to Wood's How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers, a whimsical out-of-print book that I own in its 1959 paperback incarnation. Originally published in 1917, it uses woodcuts and poems to show the differences between two things that sound (and are drawn) similar, such as "the Antelope" and "the Cantelope." It's slightly crazy-seeming and was terribly absorbing when I was a child.

Collins makes errors here and there, nothing major but still obvious. For example, in discussing viticulture, he points out that for consistency, grapes must be propagated from clones since the genetic material varies from seed to seed (p. 115). However, on page 121, his big point is that "Grapes have seeds"; he tells us this to show how Ephraim Bull's competitors were able to steal his new Concord grape. However, the seeds should make no difference; it's the cuttings that would. Since Collins then immediately goes on to say this, it's not clear why he even makes his erroneous comment about seeds.

This would be a good companion piece to a book on mediums or eccentric inventors. To play book golf, read it with a book on Formosa, Mark Twain, or coalt blue glass. You'll know why.

Edited to add: A shorter version of this review was chosen for Powell's Books' Daily Dose feature for 6/24/07. See it here.