The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

By Will Cuppy and William Steig

A very funny view of the great, and nearly great, people throughout history by New Yorker humorist Will Cuppy.

Hysterically funny (yet historically accurate), Cuppy transforms luminaries such as Nero, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Lucrezia Borgia, Attila the Hun, Lady Godiva and Miles Standish into human beings. These are not the usual portraits but as we would have known them Cuppy-wise: foolish, fallible, and very much our common ancestors.

After leaving Chicago for New York City, for eight years, from 1921 to 1929, Will Cuppy lived as a hermit on Jones Island, off Long Island’s South Shore. From there, he gained a reputation for his factual but funny magazine articles and wrote the book, How to be a Hermit, his first bestseller.

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody was left unfinished after Cuppy’s death in 1949. The manuscript was completed by a friend from some 15,000 note cards in Cuppy’s apartment. The book spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has endured as a classic of American humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Release date: Oct 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781567924732

Will Cuppy

Will Cuppy was a literary critic and humorist, known for his funny and satirical articles and books about nature and history.  He wrote for The New Yorker and other magazines, and his articles have been collected into books that are both amusing and factual.  

Reviews for The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

[ozzieslim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is hilarious and also historically accurate and very carefully researched. It was published posthumously and one can only imagine the wonderful updates that would have occurred to subsequent additions if he had lived.

The footnotes are witty and sharp and in no way detract from the rest of the work. This is the way history should be written and taught. The historical characters are brought back to earth and are written as real humans with all of their foibles exposed for laughs.

For those that love history, this is a must read. For those who love humour, you will get plenty of laughs while also getting educated. Don't forget to read the afterword. It discusses Will Cuppy in depth. I can only imagine that my place will look like his by the time I am dead. He was a misanthrope after my own heart.

[farree_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting and entertaining look at general history. There are many laugh-out-loud comments on the foibles of famous people from Pharaoh to Miles Standish, and various kings, tsars and queens eating habits. This seems to have influenced a number of writers: Sellar & Yateman's '1066 and All That,' as well as 'The Education of Hyman Kaplan.' I think Harry Shearer must have admired this author when he was in middle school (did Harry Shearer go to middle school?) Anyway, I highly recommend it.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of humorous bios of famous people from history. It's from the 1940s, so it does seem a bit dated, with a slightly musty feel about some of the humor, giant blind spots about things like white people doing anything remotely unpleasant in colonizing the New World, and a few misogynistic jokes that honestly leave me entirely unsure whether Cuppy is satirizing sexist attitudes or embracing them. The style is also rather disjointed, with lots and lots of footnotes, some of which are relevant and some of which aren't. I found the humor a bit variable. There are some moments of real satiric brilliance, some that raise an amused chuckle, and some where it all starts to wear rather thin. I suspect it is one of those books that works to best effect when dipped in and out of, rather than read straight through until you get tired of it. It's also hard to know how seriously to take any of it. I mean, in general it's clearly not meant to be taken terribly seriously at all, but apparently Cuppy actually did to a lot of very real research on his subjects. So I imagine a lot of what he includes is more or less historically accurate, but you never do quite know what's established fact, what's mere rumor, and what's just been thrown in because it's funny. This volume also features some droll cartoon illustration and two additional pieces about various royal personages: one involving humor and pranks, which I didn't find all that entertaining, and one about their eating habits and food preferences, which I kind of did.Rating: It's honestly quite hard to rate this. There's a fun, oddball charm to it that makes me want to be kind to it, but I really did find the humor value variable. I guess I'm going to resist the urge to be extra generous and call it 3.5/5.

[kaelirenee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most of the time reading this, I had a hard time sifting out the jokes from the real, but a rereading of it later was helpful. While I probably wouldn't use this book as reference for a history class, it's an interesting read and full of very dry humor.

[essa_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful book that brought me (and my roommate, who later borrowed it) near-constant laughter while reading it. The author's wonderful wit makes history far more entertaining than it ever was in school.

[wunderkind_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Laugh-out-loud funny in spots and clever the rest of the way through. I think I would have thought it was even funnier if I knew more about the history Cuppy parodies, but my high school classes left me sadly under-prepared (the tragedy of a public school education).

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Egyptians of the First Dynasty were already civilized in most respects. They had hieroglyphics, metal weapons for killing foreigners, numerous government officials, death, and taxes." "Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since." "Philip II was a great believer in diplomacy, or the art of lying. He fooled some of the people some of the time." "The War of the Spanish Succession lasted thirteen years and would have been wonderful if it hadn't been for the Duke of Marlborough. Things went from bad to worse until just about anybody could defeat the French. On one occasion, Louis's favorite regiment was knocked out by a man named Lumley." "The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings."

[meggyweg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Of course I'd read bits of this before, but did not read the full book until January 2008. It was beautifully done. The biographical sketches were full of fascinating and fully accurate facts, and they were hilarious in a way that would appeal to people of all ages. This book is wonderful way to get people interested in history. I would recommend it for high schools and colleges.

[miaculpa-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd never heard of Will Cuppy until I found this book and while his coverage of the decline and fall of most people is often smile invoking I found the most interesting part of "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody" the foreword in my edition that gives a potted biography of Cuppy. Beyond the fact that "The Decline and Fall ..." was a posthumous release, Cuppy was somewhat of an eccentric chap who lived as a hermit for years and responded to work offers by saying he wasn't a good writer.After the foreword, much of what Cuppy writes is anti-climatic but there are certainly some interesting sections about various historical features that were both amusing and educational.

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Will Cuppy trains a witty and jaundiced eye upon the great figures of the past to great merriment. Do not read this book if you are afraid of laughing out loud when reading.

[pjsullivan_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book in 1954 and would not think of parting with it. What does that tell you? This is a keeper!

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the original hardcover edition of one of my favorite books. For full comments, see the entry for the paperback edition.