The Book of Lists
David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace
This book is dedicated to the memory of our father,
Irving Wallace, who was 1 OF A KIND
Contents
Introduction
1. PEOPLE
2. MOVIES
3. THE ARTS
4. FOOD AND HEALTH
5. ANIMALS
6. WORK AND MONEY
7. SEX, LOVE AND MARRIAGE
8. CRIME
9. WAR, POLITICS AND WORLD AFFAIRS
10. TRAVEL
11. LITERATURE
12. WORDS
13. SPORTS
14. DEATH
15. MISCELLANEOUS
INDEX
Acknowledgements
As Oscar Wilde observed, the only sin is to be bored. We believe it is an equal sin to be boring, and if the great wit was correct, then the authors and millions of Book of Lists readers are quite unblemished by sin: for we place a high value on curiosity.
The original 1977 volume of the Book of Lists, and its all-new sequels, 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 bestseller, let alone a phenomenon. We thought we were just having fun.
The Book of Lists rose to number 1 on the bestseller 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, curled up in bed, took the book to parties and demanded more editions. We invited their contributions, which came pouring in, and we featured many of them in the editions that followed.
Although we are pleased to have popularised a genre that so many people enjoy, we do not pretend to have been its founders. That honour 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 contemptible 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, at 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. 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 favourite question: ‘What if…?’
In the present volume, we have updated our readers’ favourite lists, prepared an array of new material, and included lists from a wide variety of notables and celebrities, such as Ian Rankin, Philip Pullman, Johnny Cash, Brian Eno, Elmore Leonard and Ben Schott, to name only a few.
We owe much of the inspiration for this volume to our father, Irving Wallace, who always hoped we’d continue to compile new editions. Whenever possible, we have concentrated on lists that cause readers to laugh out loud, gasp, shake their heads in wonder, or call out ‘Wait until you hear this!’ To quote Mark Twain’s introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: ‘Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.’
AGES OF 25 PEOPLE HAD THEY LIVED TO 2005
10 MEN WHO CRIED IN PUBLIC
IF 27 FAMOUS MEN WERE KNOWN BY THEIR MOTHERS’ MAIDEN NAMES
9 PEOPLE WITH EXTRA LIMBS AND DIGITS
10 FAMOUS NOSES
10 MEETINGS BETWEEN FAMOUS PEOPLE AND PEOPLE NOT YET FAMOUS
17 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO WERE EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL
9 TATTOOED CELEBRITIES
10 PEOPLE WITH THE MOST SQUARE MILES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE NAMED AFTER THEM
8 UNNAMED WOMEN OF THE BIBLE
6 PEOPLE WHOSE NAMES WERE CHANGED BY ACCIDENT
8 ALMOST INDESTRUCTIBLE PEOPLE
13 MOTHERS OF INFAMOUS MEN
© The Peoples’ Almanac Photographic Archives
FRANCESCO LENTINI, THE THREE-LEGGED
MAN – WITH ONE OF HIS FIVE CHILDREN
Ages of 25 People Had They Lived to 2005
| 1. | Dylan Thomas, (1914–53), poet | 91 |
| 2. | John F. Kennedy (1917–63), president | 88 |
