Where There's a Will... There's a Dead Guy
Another book I just downloaded on my Kindle from one of the greatest minds of our time.
Celebrating birthdays are always much more fun than thinking about becoming one with Force. But death can be quite interesting when broken down into unexpected statistics, false perceptions, bizarre myths and questions worth asking about diseases, accidents, occupational hazards, poisons, infections, murder, animal attacks, insect bites and war. Cause of Death: A Perfect Little Guide to What Kills Us by Lucy Autrey Wilson, Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett, a new book from George Lucas Books and Simon & Schuster, explores all the things that make us become Jedi ghosts before our time.
"As it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane in one of the most famous movies of all time," filmmaker George Lucas writes in the book's introduction. "The eloquence of that notion -- that death will come to every single one of us -- has always been a bit of a morbid fascination for me. But is it really so morbid to be curious about the only thing in this world that is truly certain?.... But death is truth -- and its undeniably fascinating. So, I hope that Cause of Death will intrigue, inform, illuminate and perhaps even inspire you to action -- because when we learn a little about how we die, we also learn a lot about how we live."
Author Lucy Autrey Wilson, who fans might recall began her career with Lucasfilm in 1974 when she typed the script to the first Star Wars movie on an IBM Selectric typewriter, talks with Starwars.com about why George Lucas asked her to research a book about a topic most of us would rather avoid altogether.
How did the Cause of Death book project come about? Why did George Lucas want a comprehensive book of statistics and facts about all the ways humans can die?
In November 2000, in an interview between George Lucas and Tom Grace, George fleshed out his interest in a book that would provide "real" numbers and information on causes of death instead of the "funny" numbers one finds every time you read a newspaper or magazine. He thought providing people with the truth about death statistics would be both useful and entertaining. His good friend Jim Henson had died suddenly May 1990 from a bacterial infection. Because Henson traveled a lot, George had wondered if he caught the bug that killed him in an airport and that led to wondering what the most deadly diseases in the world really were. Tom had volunteered to write and research causes of death thinking it would provide good background for one of his thriller novels. The plan was for him to use his brother's proprietary software to search and find all the desired data online so the book could be put together quickly. Who knew, however, that finding accurate information on what a driver was doing when he crashed his car and was killed, or whether a virus is deadlier than bacteria, or whether people in war died more often of disease or gunshots, or which is the deadliest animal in Africa, etc. would be so much work!
How did you start tackling the research for this project?
My success with publishing Star Wars was to put the various projects into the right hands, which included a team of people who could provide the writers with the research and background they needed. After a year of death research that didn't even dent the surface of what George Lucas was interested in, Tom Grace left the project. By then I knew the book had to hinge on a consistent framework so the numbers being compared were apples to apples and not just random facts that didn't relate to each other. Tom had uncovered the databases maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) and we had broken down all deaths into interesting groupings. Similarly, the U.S. mortality statistics reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) were synced up to the numbers reported by the WHO. What had become clear was that one couldn't count on online newspapers, bloggers or others to always have their facts straight. We needed to get the bulk of our data from more reliable sources -- i.e. via viable governmental agencies that have massive teams of people to report and track statistics.
With the help of another writer/researcher Jane Ellen Stevens, official sources for stats beyond the WHO and CDC were revealed from the United Nations to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to Medline (part of the National Library of Medicine which helped enormously in turning medical terminology into "English" ) to the Bureau of Labor Statistics etc. With a framework of related death numbers reported by both the WHO and the CDC, now research needed to be done via hundreds of databases that would uncover answers to the questions George was asking. By 2004, completely hooked on the subject, and realizing I needed to know the data as well as any contributing researcher in order to edit the final book, I decided the only way to get the project done was to do the bulk of the remaining research myself and hire word-smiths who could then turn the facts into fun.
How did the Internet help with your research?
Without the Internet there would be no book. Thank heavens for Google! And thank heavens for how much all governmental agencies worldwide were uploading and making information accessible between when the research first started in 2001 to when it became intense in 2004. This is one area our tax dollars are really put to good use. Once the numbers, for example, for all worldwide and U.S. accidental deaths were known, then one needed to drill down to find the cause (cell phone or speeding, ladder or hot water, etc.). But when it came to certain areas, it wasn't easy. Neither the CDC nor the WHO list deaths by whether they were caused by a water buffalo or a hippo (in fact most deaths in Africa, China and other countries are best guesses). Nor do they include information on whether someone died being hit or struck while playing baseball or football. So, to flesh out the chapters on Accidental death by Flora and Fauna, Nature and Sports, for example, required coming up with a list of everything to be included (i.e. for Flora and Fauna, a list of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, marine animals, and flora A to Z) and then doing a Google search on each creature on the list to find out as much info as was out there on people killed by that particular agent.
What statistic or fact did you learn in writing this book that surprised you the most?
I probably spent the most research time on death by Flora and Fauna and Bugs. What surprised me in the Flora and Fauna section is that although death by shark attacks, mountain lions, bears, etc. are always front page news, we don't die very often from the creatures we share the planet with. In fact, it made me really sad to realize how many of these creatures man has managed to wipe out. In researching accidental deaths from motor vehicles, I was surprised by how many pedestrians are killed annually (I'm now very careful when I cross the street) and in researching death by Bugs (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites and prions), I never fully realized how truly nasty those little microscopic creatures really are (especially if one has a weakened immune system). So, I'm now very good about washing my hands.
Which section of the book is your favorite and why?
I like Accidental deaths by Flora and Fauna and Bugs the best because they were the hardest to figure out and the most interesting. While I was working on the book, people were always asking me if I found the subject really depressing. The answer is no. What was increasingly refreshing was the realization that almost all premature deaths are preventable if you follow general guidelines (wash your hands, exercise, watch what you eat, etc.). That led to a decision to rank the deaths in the book by whether they happen prematurely rather than when one takes all ages into account. What was also uplifting is how much we've improved our average life spans since my parent's generation with inventions like seat belts, bike helmets and improved medicines.
What's the weirdest way to die?
One of the weirdest (and saddest) ways to die is from Scleroderma which killed one of my favorite painters, Paul Klee, and also a very sweet fellow Lucasfilm staffer many years ago. It's very rare, (only one person died of it in the U.S. in each of 2004 and 2005). It's a form of arthritis that causes the skin all over your body to become progressively hardened.
What's the most common way to die?
The most common way to die is by self inflicting your body with too much of the wrong substances (tobacco, high cholesterol foods, high fructose corn syrup, alcohol, etc.) which raise the probability you'll die from some kind of cancer or organ failure.
Why do you think this book will be helpful to readers, as well as entertaining?
I think Robert Young Pelton's introduction sums it up pretty well. It is an active body and inquisitive mind that keeps us young. We are all going to die, but we can live life longer and more fully by doing simple things like wearing a seatbelt, skipping dessert and never smoking. I hope the reader, rather than brood about all the horrible things that can kill you (or has just killed someone you read about daily in magazines and newspapers), will be careful to avoid the bad things that are within their control and go out and have a good time.
Can you talk a little bit about how George Lucas Books was created and why?
In 1999, I had been running the Lucas Licensing Publishing Department for about 10 years when George Lucas first mentioned he was interested in books on subjects that had nothing to do with Star Wars. Even though packaging and licensing books on our own popular movie properties was very different from developing factual nonfiction, I believe in the saying "Where there's a will there's a way" and took on the challenge of turning George's interests into books. One of the books was to be on causes of death and other general film-related books were also planned. So with one author already on board to research and write the death book, I hired Jonathan Rinzler to help edit the new nonfiction. That same year, we made a five-book deal with Ballantine to publish the new imprint nonfiction titles. The plan was to develop these books together with our publishing partner while continuing with our regular licensed projects. Each nonfiction book would have one author to both do the research and write.
Starting with one or two Star Wars titles per year in the late 1980s, the Lucasfilm publishing program had been built up so by the early 2000's we were publishing between 100 and 200 mostly Star Wars books, magazines and comic titles per year. When it became clear the new nonfiction was going to take a lot more time than anticipated, I left Licensing in August 2003 to join JAK Films and manage the new imprint as a department of one. Over time I realized most authors who are good with words are not that good with numbers and the one author-one book approach wasn't producing the desired results. Eventually, the arrangement with Ballantine was dissolved as unworkable and JAK Films moved forward packaging and publishing each title individually. That resulted in the very fine team at Simon & Schuster becoming the Cause of Death book's publisher and contributing the really great book design.
Cause of Death: A Perfect Little Guide to What Kills Us by Lucy Autrey Wilson, Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett, a new book from George Lucas Books and Simon & Schuster is on shelves in bookstores nationwide.
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