What a fascinating book that I didn't find myself enjoying!

There is a lot to love. It is legitimately very very funny, the history is all accurate, and the metastory of the author's battle with hermitage, depression, and eventual suicide casts an interesting pallor over the entire affair. Cuppy manages to thread an increasing thesis through all of the loosely interconnected tales: powerful figures are flawed in very entertaining, boring, predictable ways, and that historiography fails us in our understanding of them.

But I just... felt like it dragged. The pace of each individual story is pretty much identical (which works to a certain effect but does not lend itself to repeated reading, like binge-watching SVU.)

★★★