The concept of "inviting" famous persons from history for dinner is an interesting way of presenting history to the general public.

Regretfully the author had to spoil his work by interrupting the story to expound his biases and prejudices, some of which come across as very dated nowadays. ( )

It's been a long time since I read this, but every now and then it pops into my memory. Today I went and looked it up at the library for old times' sake.
It's a history-ish book... by which I mean, it's about a couple of fellows who are miraculously able to invite any historical figure they want to have dinner with them. Two things from it have always stuck in my mind: when Robespierre comes and makes a little guillotine to cut up his oranges, and when Emily Dickinson comes and secretes herself in an upstairs room, sending notes and poems floating down through the floorboards.
It's very odd book, and extremely long. Many hundreds of pages. I can't remember why I checked it out exactly, I think I heard mention of it somewhere online years ago, then went and located it at my college library. It hadn't been checked out for over twenty years, I think. Indeed, a very obscure and unusual book. ( )

A comforting book in the face of the barbarity of the time in which it was written, and of our own. There is also in humans a capacity for cultivation. This book is saturated by the longing for that. ( )

The premise, a series of dinner parties where the invitees are both famous and very long dead, is a perfect construction for Van Loon's biographical history of the world. The biographies are as quirky as the premise, but there's something about Van Loon's desperate humanity that makes this shine. ( )

While Van Loon's Lives is reminiscent of Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds in bringing historical personalities to life in contemporary times, the conversations among the characters is sometimes perceptive, sometimes vapid, and often dated. Discovered on the faux library shelf of a pub, it did provide considerable amusement, but as history it's weak. ( )