A Curious Man

March 25, 2013
Robert Ripley was as unique and fascinating as the “Believe It or Not” newspaper feature that made him one of the most popular and widely read syndicated cartoonists in the country during the 1930s, and Thompson (Hurricane Season) delivers an equally fascinating biography that captures the influence of Ripley’s work life then and now, well into the age of television and the Internet. A slight, bucktoothed, and “socially timid” youth growing up in Santa Rosa, Calif., Ripley’s main interests were baseball and drawing caricatures of his classmates and teachers. He moved after high school to San Francisco to draw for the city’s main newspapers, first the Bulletin and then the Chronicle. Thompson presents a vivid portrait of the city’s hotbed of cartoonists who were “taking the concept of illustrated newspaper entertainment to new levels.” Later, he explores in detail how Ripley moved east to draw for the New York Globe, whose overseas assignments to cover odd sporting events eventually led to Ripley developing the “Believe It or Not” concept, turning it into a widely popular comic, a bestselling book, a radio show, and a traveling show—becoming “an unlikely playboy-millionaire” in the process. Thompson superbly shows how Ripley’ work is the basis for today’s more extreme reality shows by teaching readers “to gape with respect at the weirdness of man and nature.”

April 1, 2013
Biography of legendary "Believe It Or Not" cartoonist, world traveler and eccentric millionaire Robert Ripley (1890-1949). Although capturing every dimension of an oddly complex character like Ripley is no easy task, biographer Thompson (Hurricane Season, 2007, etc.) turns in an obsessively researched but somewhat workmanlike study of the Believe It Or Not founder, whose amazing American life itself plays out like an impossible fairy tale without the need for any particular showy literary finesse. Ripley was born in the 1890s into a lower-middle-class family in California and grew into both a formidable athlete and cartoonist, two interests he would later combine and pursue as a sports cartoonist. But after a few failed stints as a cartoonist for small-time San Francisco newspapers, he moved to New York to try his luck. But it wasn't until he took his first overseas journey to Egypt and across Europe that he began to cultivate an interest in human oddities and exotic cultures that would eventually make his fortune. He jumped from cartoons to radio and then took the Believe It or Not franchise to books and TV. By the 1930s, while most of America was reeling from the Depression, Ripley was one of the highest-paid and most well-traveled men in the world (he visited around 150 countries in all). Unfortunately, once World War II commenced, he found the world was no longer his playground, with hostilities breaking out in all his favorite countries: China's submission to communism in the late 1940s was particularly heartbreaking for Ripley. Overall, Thompson's book only skims the surface of Ripley's psyche without delving too deeply into what drove his odd wanderlust and exotic tastes. The author's competent bricks-and-mortar prose is nothing special, but it does adequately convey a detailed fly-on-the-wall-style narrative from the (often unbelievable) facts of Ripley's own life. A nuts-and-bolts, mostly nonextraordinary rendering of an extraordinary American life.

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May 15, 2013

In the first biography of Robert Ripley (1890-1949) since Robert Bernard Considine's Ripley, the Modern Day Marco Polo over 50 years ago, Thompson (Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR) presents a well-researched tale of the man born LeRoy Ripley, who combined his talent for drawing cartoons, beginning with sports-related newspaper spreads, with his interest in strange facts to create what became the multimedia Believe It or Not! brand. Ripley grew from a shy, stuttering, buck-toothed dropout to a world-renowned traveler, eccentric, and playboy. Although sometimes a boor, with biases and awkwardness on display, Ripley's dedication to learning and his success in illustrating elusive realities is conveyed by Thompson in a manner that makes Ripley a sympathetic character. Between the world wars and during the Great Depression, Ripley provided escape and entertainment that lives on in today's popular culture that is full of over-the-top reality TV shows and excessive superlatives. VERDICT Interspersed with "Believe It" sidebars and plenty of outlandish and unusual characters, Thompson's biography is a must read for those who enjoy rags-to-riches stories or anything out of the ordinary. Read it or not? Read it!--Barbara Ferrara, Chesterfield Cty. P.L., VA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
You can be very familiar with someone's work but know next to nothing about the person himself. Ripley's Believe It or Not!, which began life as a newspaper feature before becoming a popular television series, is a staple of popular culture. But who among us knows much about its creator? LeRoy Robert Ripley was born in 1890, although he often claimed other birth years; he wanted to be a pro baseball player but wound up a sports cartoonist; he was a bit of a womanizer, quite a bit of a drinker, and he had an insatiable curiosity about the unusual, the exotic, and the just-plain weird. Believe It or Not! made him a wealthy man, which allowed Ripley to indulge his own passions, which included collecting some truly odd things (torture devices, for example). Thompson paints a picture of Ripley as a brilliant but aggressively eccentric man, a globe-trotting curiosity seeker who always believed there was something even more unusual just around the corner. A fine introduction to a man who, for most of us, has been merely the name above a famous title.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)