{"title":"Mark Svenvold","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"elmer-mccurdy-book-mark-svenvold-9781841153223","title":"Elmer McCurdy","description":"Shot dead 1911. Buried 1977. These are critical dates in the life and afterlife of Elmer McCurdy. An indifferent train robber, McCurdy achieved fame after his death as a bizarre exhibit in carnivals and films, and was eventually found painted day-glo orange in a ghost train in 1977.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522500829457,"sku":"GOR006178022","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50779605336337,"sku":"CIN1841153222A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51797233697041,"sku":"GOR010688482","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52842456088849,"sku":"GOR006191352","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1841153222.jpg?v=1751428745"},{"product_id":"elmer-mccurdy-book-mark-svenvold-9781841153230","title":"Elmer McCurdy","description":"Born 1880. Shot dead 1911. Buried 1977. These are the critical dates in the extraordinary life and afterlife of Elmer McCurdy.  Elmer McCurdy's first thirty-one years in this world didn't add up to much. He was a hobo, a plumber-come-miner, who'd jumped a train and drifted west on the back of an infectious, turn-of-the-century optimism. He was a drunk too, and, soon enough, a failed train robber. In 1911, in an attempt to blow open the safe of a train, McCurdy fused $40,000 to the safe's walls. Later that year he robbed the wrong train and rode away with a haul that was described by the papers as 'one of the smallest in the history of train robbery.' Within days he was dead -- shot by a sheriff and his posse in a gun battle on a ranch.  At this point McCurdy, like millions of others, should have slipped quietly from memory. But, in death, he accidentally found fame. From the Joseph Johnson Funeral Home, where the owner propped McCurdy's mummified cadaver up and charged a nickel-a-look, to the sideshows of the Great Patterson Carnival, McCurdy became big business. In 1928 he was the star attraction in a carnival that accompanied an extraordinary transcontinental running race from Los Angeles to New York. He was the 'Oklahoma Outlaw', admired as a hero in a criminal league to which he'd never truly belonged. And then, in the 1940s and 1950s, he was reinvented for a series of Hollywood exploitation films, before winding up painted day-glo orange and hanging by his neck in the Laff in the Dark ghost tunnel in Long Beach. He was found here in 1976 during the filming of an episode of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and finally handed over to the authorities.  Mark Svenvold unravels this remarkable story -- a dead body's journey through the 20th-century -- with the sensitivity the dead are due. Part travel book, part exposition of the bizarre and exotic corners of the American entertainment industry, part meditation on death and its meanings, 'Elmer McCurdy' is a unique and gripping biography.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49589017149713,"sku":"GOR003001608","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50679605952785,"sku":"GOR004724210","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51848094744849,"sku":"GOR014425610","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1841153230.jpg?v=1751027130"},{"product_id":"elmer-mccurdy-book-mark-svenvold-9780465083497","title":"Elmer Mccurdy","description":"This is the story of Elmer McCurdy, a failed plumber from Bangor, Maine, who drifted west to become a failed outlaw. He arrived in Oklahoma a few decades after the golden age of outlaws and attempted to resurrect the lost art of train robbing. In 1911, after a short spree of comically bungled robberies, a sheriff's posse caught up with him and shot him dead.In death, Elmer McCurdy accidentally found fame. From the Oklahoma funeral home that propped up his preserved corpse and charged a nickel-a-look, to the sideshows of the Great Patterson Carnival, where he was exhibited as a felled outlaw, McCurdy became big business. His post-mortem career in show business lasted until 1976, when he was discovered painted orange and hanging by the neck in a California amusement ride. Mark Svenvold has reconstructed the bizarre itinerary of the corpse through sixty years of freakshows, sideshows, carnivals, and exploitation movies, capturing some of this country's greatest fantasies and most elabourate publicity stunts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50031841313041,"sku":"CIN0465083498G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50316466159889,"sku":"CIN0465083498VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002598359313,"sku":"NIN9780465083497","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0465083498.jpg?v=1751103712"},{"product_id":"big-weather-book-mark-svenvold-9780805076462","title":"Big Weather","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096930881809,"sku":"CIN0805076468G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51522605547793,"sku":"CIN0805076468VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0805076468.jpg?v=1751011751"},{"product_id":"big-weather-book-mark-svenvold-9780805080148","title":"Big Weather","description":"Why do some people chase the kind of storms that would send most people running for their lives? Why does devastating weather maintain a primal hold on our collective imagination? With Matt Biddle, an Ahab-like veteran storm chaser, as his guide, Mark Svenvold draws a portrait of a culture enamoured by extremes during a 6,000-mile journey through the heartland. Along the way, he encounters an assortment of eccentric characters, including a duo named the Twister Sisters and an IMAX filmmaker who drives an armour-plated truck. And they're all after one thing. At the heart of the excitement are the awe-inspiring events themselves - a tornado that levels a small Nebraska town, wild twisters that spin cars into the air and, in the case of unlucky Donald Staley, destroy three of his homes in succession. An entertaining narrative brimming with stylish prose, \"Big Weather\" is a wryly observed meditation on the weather and the subculture of catastrophilia, the culture and commerce of catastrophic weather.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51560948007185,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51560948728081,"sku":"CIN0805080147VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816156492049,"sku":"CIN0805080147G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0805080147.jpg?v=1750703121"},{"product_id":"elmer-mccurdy-book-mark-svenvold-9780465083480","title":"Elmer Mccurdy","description":"Removing the jaw, the coroner pulled from the back of the mouth a single green corroded copper penny, dated 1924, and several ticket stubs, one that read Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles: the biggest clue to its identity came straight from the corpse's mouth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51748007379217,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51748008165649,"sku":"CIN046508348XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52739394273553,"sku":"CIN046508348XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780465083480.jpg?v=1751023888"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-mark-svenvold.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}