INTRODUCTION

A book of lists? Maybe some of you whippersnappers out there are scratching your heads in puzzlement. Those of us who are a tad older fondly recall the original Book of Lists series from the mid-1970s to early 1980s (with a fourth volume in 1994). I was only a lad then, but I devoured them.

David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace were ahead of their time when they first put together these compendiums of rapid-fire facts. We had yet to enter the era of the short attention span—MTV-style hyperediting, USA Today, Headline News Network, soundbites, blogs, Nintendo and Xbox, fast food domination, and microwave everything (not to mention the resulting Attention Deficit Disorder)—but they and their many, many contributors, researchers, and editors gave us a mountain of knowledge in an easily digestible format. We could read about “12 Famous People Who Changed Their Birthdays,” “8 Generals Who Never Won a Battle,” “18 Words Worth Reviving,” “6 UFO Encounters of a Sexual Kind,” “18 Health Experts and How They Died,” and “9 Famous Hemorrhoid Sufferers.”

The format caught on like wildfire. Amazon currently returns 267 hits for the title search “book of lists.” This mini-library includes The Art Teacher's Book of Lists, The Southern Gardener's Book of Lists, The Marine Corps Book of Lists, The Gay Book of Lists, The Bride's Book of Lists, Civil War Book of Lists, and The Celebrity Sex Book of Lists. Could there be a more versatile format for presenting facts? I doubt it, which is why I'm surprised that it took me this long to think of doing a book of lists for subversive and unusual information—pot-smoking politicians, criminal cops, corporate crooks, CIA cryptonyms, gay animals, biblical contradictions, banned movies, and health problems that cause or mimic so-called mental illnesses. In the tradition of the original Books of Lists, I asked some contributors to join in, and they gave me rosters of botched executions, Disneyland deaths, sex spam, modern magicians, and more.

So jump right in anywhere—no need to worry about whether you can devote a long stretch to your reading. The disparate info has been condensed into a super-concentrated form. Simply apply to your brain.

–Russ Kick
Tucson, Arizona