A review by emilypoche
Mavericks: Life stories and lessons of history's most extraordinary misfits by Jenny Draper

funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

2.0

Thank you to Watkins Publishing for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. 

Mavericks: Life Stories and Lessons of History’s Most Extrordinary Misfits is a humorous pop history collection by Jenny Draper. Covering twenty four different brief biographies of (primarily British) oddballs. 

Admittedly, I was not familiar with Jenny Draper from her social media and was compelled to read the book based on title alone. Histories of under acknowledged figures, especially offbeat ones, are generally pretty fun! I think the author’s experience as a social media content creator was pretty evident in the way the information was structured. While pretty witty and filled with zippy asides, the biographies had much more in common with YouTube and TikTok than other history compilation books. At times I thought that the writing was excessively casual and as if it was lacking a little legitimacy. My assessment would be that this is much more of a humor book about history than a history book with a humorous style. 

What I found somewhat difficult about this book is that while it did make me laugh, and it did seem very interesting, there was something somewhat haphazard about it. There was no conclusion or afterward that drew any major point or theme. The subheadings of the chapter were all lessons to learn from the person, but there was very little else unifying that idea of ‘lessons.’ Even the brief introductions didn’t really flesh out this idea. It almost seemed as if in one point of development the idea of a life lessons style book was proposed but abandoned, and this was a remnant left behind. The choice of historical figure was also baffling. Their inclusion seemed somewhat random and like there were too many choices that really didn’t have enough details for a full inclusion. The establishment criteria for inclusion was muddy and it really seemed like it was just twenty four interesting mostly-British people. 

I think that this isn’t a bad concept. I just feel like the way it exists in its current state seems unfinished, or at least under edited, and it would work much better as a social media series than a book. 2/5.