There’s a lot of hype in the press at the moment about Kickstarter, and how it can be used to raise money for authors looking to publish a new book. Comic book artist Rich Burlew raised over $1,000,000 dollars from his fan base to fund his new book ‘The Order of the Stick’. An exciting model, and something to keen an eye on.

So when Carl Rodrigue got in touch with us to ask if we would help his team with their campaign we agreed, and here we go – here is the idea behind the campaign:

What if you were asked to name the most significant classical composer? Chances are you would choose Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Of course each of the Big Three deserves a place in the classical music pantheon, but how would Mozart’s work be perceived today if he had been able to compose until 4:53 p.m. like Beethoven or even 7:32 p.m. like Bach, instead of dying at 10:45 a.m. on the clock of his life?

That’s what 24 Hour Life is all about.

By mapping out the primary events of a lifetime over one day (we applied a period of 80 years life expectancy to the 24 hour clock), not only you can see that the Beatles lasted less than three hours in John Lennon’s day, but also that Hernan Cortés defeated the Aztecs in less than an hour or that Nelson Mandela spent almost eight hours of his day behind bars.

These are some of the many discoveries you will make with 24 Hour Life – 100 People Who Changed the World, a 200+ page book devoted to a hundred individuals from different disciplines, eras and countries, who each left their unique mark on the world.

For each person, there is a quote, an illustration and a biography that focuses on 12 main events, which are mapped out using a 24 hour clock.

Some of you have already done the math: 100 individuals each with 12 events is 1200 dates! As you can imagine, the research alone is colossal, so I teamed up with friends and colleagues for the project: journalists who have an interest in history as well as history graduates who have an interest in writing. In total, fifteen people, including writers, editors, translators, illustrators, and graphic designers.

Together, we wanted to create a completely new reference work and we are very proud of the results.

For us, this is the first volume of a collection which could deal with historical periods as well as disciplines of work or different themes. We’re already hard at work on the second volume in the collection: 24 Hour Life – 100 Events that Changed the World.

To help us launch this collection, we offer you the first volume: 24 Hour Life – 100 People Who Changed the World via the Kickstarter platform:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1854573593/24-hour-life

Our campaign ends in 23 days and we’re confident we can make it all the way!

There are different ways of approaching history.

24 Hour Life offers you a new one.

And if you are fond of History and/or are a visual person, this is as good as it gets!