Who Was Who: 5000 BC - 1914 Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be — History's Most Dignified Roast Session

Look, I have a complaint. I teach high school English. I spend my days explaining to teenagers why Shakespeare's insults are actually funny, why satire matters, why wit is a weapon. And then I stumble across this little gem from 1914 and realize that Irwin Leslie Gordon was doing what I try to teach—but better, funnier, and with absolutely zero regard for the feelings of anyone who died before World War I.

I finished this at 11 PM last night, grading a stack of sophomore essays on The Great Gatsby. (No, Madison, the green light does not represent Gatsby's favorite color.) And here I am, listening to Gordon describe Cleopatra as someone who "used poor judgment in the selection of her pets" regarding the asp incident, and I'm laughing so hard I wake up Denise.

The Literary Equivalent of a Roast

This is what happens when a 1914 humorist decides that every famous person in history deserves to be taken down a peg. Gordon's method is simple: write biographical entries that sound official, dignified, encyclopedic—and then slip in observations so dry they could cure tobacco. Napoleon gets treated like a real estate speculator who overextended. Nero's musical career receives the kind of polite dismissal you'd give a student's garage band. The whole thing reads like someone handed the Encyclopedia Britannica to Oscar Wilde and said, "Fix this."

At just over three hours, it's structured as a dictionary—alphabetical entries, quick hits, move on. Which means you get whiplash jumping from ancient Egypt to medieval Europe to American politics in the span of minutes. Some entries are a paragraph. Some are a sentence. The pacing is bizarre by modern standards, but that's the format. It's not trying to tell a story. It's trying to make you snort on the lakefront while joggers give you concerned looks.

Five Readers, Five Flavors of Deadpan

Here's where LibriVox gets interesting. You've got five different volunteers reading sections, and honestly? The variation works for this particular book. Sean McGaughey carries the bulk with this wonderfully straight delivery—he reads Gordon's absurdities like he's announcing train schedules, which makes them funnier. Jim Mowatt brings a slightly warmer tone to the early sections. Laurie Anne Walden and Sibella Denton handle the later entries with their own distinct rhythms.

Is it polished? No. There are moments where you can hear the recording environment shift, where one reader's microphone sounds different from another's. But—and this is important—the format forgives a lot. You're not following a narrative thread that requires consistency. You're dipping in and out of entries. The switching actually keeps you alert.

The real issue is that LibriVox recordings are volunteer work, and this one's from the earlier era of the project. Audio quality varies. Some sections are crisp; others have that slightly hollow room sound. If you're an audiophile, you'll notice. If you're grading papers at 11 PM and just want something to make you smile, you won't care.

Who's Going to Love This (And Who Should Run)

My students would hate this. I love it.

If you're the kind of person who reads footnotes for fun, who thinks David Sedaris doesn't go far enough, who wishes more history books had the courage to call Alexander the Great "a young man with too much energy"—this is your people. Teachers who need a palate cleanser, history buffs with a sense of humor, podcast listeners who like their wit bone-dry, and anyone who's ever thought "famous people were probably just as ridiculous as everyone else."

Skip it if you want deep historical analysis, character development, or anything resembling a traditional biography. Also skip if you need production values or you're my principal. (Sorry, Martinez.)

Worth Pausing the Faculty Meeting For

At three hours, it's the perfect length for a weekend of walks or a few evenings of grading. It's free through LibriVox, which means your only investment is time. And while I wouldn't call it essential listening, I would call it genuinely funny—which is rarer than you'd think in audiobooks about dead people.

Gordon understood something my students are still learning: irreverence requires knowledge. You can't mock Napoleon effectively unless you know exactly what you're mocking. This is satire that respects its subjects enough to roast them properly. Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History takes the opposite approach—reverent, meticulous, the kind of biography that treats its subject with the gravity Gordon deliberately avoids.

The prose deserves to be savored. Even at 1.0x.