Badass: The Birth of a Legend

From sex-crazed gods to ravenous monsters, Ben Thompson brings legendary titans to life in tales of adventure, bloodlust, and unrelenting badassitude.

Since the beginning of human history people have created myths, tall tales, superheroes, and arch-villains—men and women who embarked on insane adventures, performed extraordinary feats of unparalleled awesomeness, and overcame all odds to violently smite their foes into bloody pulp. In Badass: The Birth of a Legend, Ben Thompson compiles these fantastical tales from the beginning of time to today and tells them in the completely over-the-top manner in which they were intended, including:

Rama
The Indian god-king who led an army of monkeys against the King of All Demons

Thor
The Viking god of thunder and awesome hair, who crushed the skulls of giants with a ridiculously huge hammer

Beowulf
An Anglo-Saxon hero so hardcore he could arm-wrestle monsters' joints out of their sockets

Moby-Dick
The hate-filled literary behemoth who obliterated ship hulls with his face

Skuld
The Norse necromancer queen who summoned a horde of zombie berserkers

Dirty Harry Callahan
The prototypical modern-day antihero and very embodiment of badass

"In his first book, Badass, Thompson, creator of the Web site badassoftheweek.com, focused on warlords, samurai, pirates, and gunfighters who actually existed; in this follow-up, he turns to mythological badasses throughout history. From Anubis and Zeus to Capt. James T. Kirk and Godzilla, Thompson delivers detailed and adrenaline-fueled screeds on 40 characters 'whose stories of ball-crushing conquest are still awesome enough to make even the tamest readers want to snatch up a sword and go hunting for dragon meat.' Subjects include El Chupacabra ('this freakadelic ass-reaming spawn of Satan'); Diomedes ('the wanton slaughter of faceless jobbers is just the beginning of awesomeness'); and, in a long-overdue tribute, the Daleks from Doctor Who ('these murderous, automated salt-shakers are vile constructs of pure evil'). Fortunately, the book includes badass women as well as men, and Thompson's overheated prose rises even further when describing the Indian goddess Kali: 'When she's not consuming the entrails of the gods, getting drunk on human blood, performing her Dance of Annihilation... she shoots blood out of her mouth like a fire hose... she's pretty much the most totally metal being ever.' (Mar.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright PWyxz LLC)

Ben Thompson—author of Badass,creator of the epic website badassoftheweek.com, and the  Internet’s foremost expert on badassitude—is back to enthrall lovers of skull-smashing, bone-crushing bad behavior with his latest compendium, Badass: The Birth of a Legend. Like its macho predecessor, Badass: The Birth of a Legend celebrates fearless berserkers of every stripe, male and female, but this time pulls them from the hoary pages of mythology, fantasy fiction, and the silver screen—from Zeus to Beowulf to Dirty Harry Callahan, the most merciless gods, monsters, heroes, villains, and mythical creatures ever envisioned. Forget your whiny Twilight vampires and werewolves, these badasses kick butt!

Ben Thompson graduated cum laude from the honors program at Florida State University with degrees in history and political science, and has run the war hammer of a website, badassoftheweek.com, since 2004. Even though he's never flown a jetpack over the Atlantic Ocean or punched someone so hard that his head exploded, he is considered by many to be the world's foremost expert on badassitude.