SKU: 95184317801

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

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Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the WorldThe historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated. Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly is a different kind

The historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated.

Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly is a different kind of book. Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck-or perhaps some combination of them all-leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells.

Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day. . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. Ren Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard -- until he pushed his luck too far. John Symmes, a hero of the War of 1812, nearly succeeded in convincing Congress to fund an expedition to the North Pole, where he intended to prove his theory that the earth was hollow and ripe for exploitation; his quixotic quest counted Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe among its greatest admirers.

Collins' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other nine men and women in Banvard's Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions-acts of excavation and reclamation-to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.



Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
Published: 05/01/2002
ISBN: 9780312300333
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.70d
Award: Oregon Book Awards - Nominee
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SKU: 95184317801

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Cheifi74
Battle Creek, US
★★★★★ 5
Quick and easy
My water kettle just stopped working after a year. Once I boxed up and returned the kettle, Asurion refunded my account.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2026
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christian wilson
Waukegan, US
★★★★★ 5
Easy peasy
Good communication. Easy to file a claim. Received my refund as soon as the product was mailed.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2026
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Kenneth J. Goodman Sr.
Carnegie, US
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Its good to have for electronics and kitchen items
I get the Insurance for certain Electronics and kitchen items.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2026
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Annabanana
Pawtucket, US
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Quick and easy claim process. My refund was processed the same day that I shipped back the product.
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LadyG
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 1
All Gotchas, Gimmicks, and Grief
My husband broke the item in question, which was a Chemex coffee maker made of nothing but glass. It shattered full of coffee, so like a normal human he cleaned up the dangerous mess and threw it away. I put in a claim, and it said that I had to ship back the product. Believing that the Asurion process was as simple as stated, and reading the agreement that does mention that sometimes they'll require shipment of the item, but that they will review cases and use reasonable judgment, I contacted their chat, explaining that the requirement that I mail them a wet pile of shards of glass soaked in coffee (and a little bit of blood) was unsafe and unreasonable. I don't even know how I could do that in a way that would be safe for the people opening the packaging, or even to take it to the store. The shards of glass might puncture any plastic, and the wetness would soak through, plus there's the biohazard issue. Seems silly for a $47 product replacement to me. I figured any human would understand. First chat associate closed my case without even responding to me. I had to reopen it. The second one told me, "Yes, that is how your warranty works" as an answer to my "Hello, the last chat closed without me talking to anyone." I tried to explain the situation, and was told "If you call the hotline, maybe they'll help you." I call the hotline. The first person tells me tough, I have to mail it. I say it was thrown away. He says "AHA then it's lost! Your warranty doesn't cover lost things!" I say no, it's not lost, it was disposed of properly as shards of glass should be. I finally ask can I speak to someone else or a supervisor. He lies and says yes. I sit on hold for 20 minutes, never any wait time or any sort of indicator of when someone will talk to me. The phone call quality finally gets very horribly staticky, so I hang up and try again. Hallelujah, I get a decent human being who immediately says, "Oh, no, that's not reasonable! That is an unsafe thing to have to mail. I'll send it to the override department who should approve this because it's obvious that's not a normal thing to expect." Today I get an email that says: We can't approve your claim. We reviewed your NO SUPPORTING MANUFACTURER COFFEE MAKER claim. The product in your claim is not covered by your plan. As a result, we're unable to approve your claim. Nothing about the requirement to mail a biohazard, just the item isn't covered even though the item is absolutely covered. While I understand that loss prevention is important, this is a very small potatoes return and it isn't like I made this up. It would be easy to make me happy. I'm sure it has cost them more money to deny it than they would have lost covering the Chemex. I've bought multiple of their product replacement policies before. I never will again. They didn't offer for me to send a picture or anything. They just wasted hours of my time and sent a clearly AI-based answer, rather than treating me like a valuable customer.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2024

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