The New Book of Lists [antikvár]

Introduction As Oscar Wilde ohserved, the only sin is to be bored. If the great wil was correct, the authors and millions of Book of Lists readers are (jiiite unblemished by sin: for we place a high value on curiosity. We believe that it is an equal sin to be boring. As children, we were brought up on reference books in school that were dry as dust. At home, on our parents' bookshelves, we happily found a world of delights. The dry facts and cold equations of the lrcary school books were toppled by our discoveries; according to the books in our family library, life was strange, unexpected, funny, tragic, mysterious, moving, absurd, and always astonishing. Making lists can be a soothing endeavor or a riotously funny one. The everyday lists we all make are a balm to a cluttered mind; list making puts things in order, it clarifies, it helps coax truth from the cracks of the universe, and it invites our favorite question: "What if. . . ?" The original 1977 volume of The Book of Lists, and its all new se(|uels, inspired nearly 200 imitation volumes. These have included books of lists about movies, rock 'n' roll, Judaism, the Bible, general sports, and countless other subjects. The books spawned games, toilet paper with lists on it, CD-ROMs, calendars, and television shows. We had no idea that The Book of Lists would become a best seller, let alone a phenomenon. We thought we were just having fun. The Book of Lists rose to #I on the best-seller lists and was published all over the world. Young readers wrote to tell us they'd bought our book for fun and were using it to spice up their schoolwork. Older readers locked themselves in bathrooms with it, curled up in bed with it, took it to parties, and demanded more editions. We invited their contributions, which came pouring in, and we featured many in the editions that followed. Although we are pleased to have popularized a genre that so many people enjoy, we do not pretend to have been its founders. That honor goes to the Reverend Nathaniel Wanley, author of Wonders of the Little World, a book of lists first published in 1678. We didn't know about the Reverend Wanley when we wrote our own Book of Lists, but a glance through his table of contents shows striking similarities: "Of such People and Nations as have been scourged and afflicted by small and contemptable things," "Of such as having been extremely Wild, and Prodigal, or Debauched in their Youth, have afterwards proved excellent Persons," "Of such as have been seized with an extraordinary joy, al what hath followed there-upon." The trend never died down and in recent years has had a dazzling renaissance. We appear to live in an age in which the volume of information available to us is far too overwhelming for our minds to process. Lists help us wend our way through the thicket of facts with whimsy and wisdom. In the present volume, we have updated our readers' favorite lists, prepared an array of new material, and included lists from a wide variety of notables and celebrities. In all cases, lists make us think and sharpen minds dulled by : 1 !¦ ,1 ¦¦