Karl Marx is buried in London, John Keats in Rome, and Leon Trotsky in Mexico. The Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is now known for the graves of Jim Morrison, Victor Hugo, and Oscar Wilde, but when it opened in the early 19th century, the owners felt they needed a few famous names to make it desirable – so they moved Molière's body there. Organized thematically into 75 sections, "Graves of the Great and Famous" tours the world exploring the burial sites of leading artists, thinkers, scientists, athletes, revolutionaries, politicians, and pioneers. Some, like communist leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vladimir Lenin, are buried in grand mausoleums visited by millions every year, while others are buried in unknown villages. From lives violently cut short through assassination – Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln – to those who suffered tragic accidents (Princess Diana), from mobsters like Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel and John Gotti to Napoleon and his mistress Marie Walewska, from Nelson Mandela to Eva Perón, from Graceland to Highgate Cemetery, the book provides a guide to some of the most famous and unusual graves of the great and good. Featuring 150 photographs of graves, cemeteries, and mausoleums, "Graves of the Great and Famous" is a condensed guide to the final resting places of the renowned – and the notorious.
