Overview

""An amusing and cruelly accurate cultural critique"" (The Wall Street Journal), this informative and utterly debilitating compendium explores the many surprising ways you might die a horrible death. DID YOU KNOW THAT CARROTS CAUSE BLINDNESS AND BANANAS ARE RADIOACTIVE? That too many candlelight dinners can cause cancer? And not only is bottled water a veri-table petri dish of biohazards (so is tap water, by the way) but riding a bicycle might destroy your sex life? In Encyclopedia Paranoiaca, master satirists Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf have assembled an authoritative, disturbingly comprehensive, and utterly debilitating inventory of things poised to harm, maim, or kill you--all of them based on actual research about the perils of everyday life. Thoroughly sourced and conveniently alphabetized for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (But it probably won't.)

Full Product Details

9781439199565

Table of Contents

Reviews

Despite its presentation of contemporary dangers, the book is charmingly old-fashioned, with a structure and format that pay tribute to the reference books that lined the shelves of academics and nerds before the Internet reshaped the personal library. . . . Beard and Cerf write with wit in this ironic take on a world where we live in constant fear of dairy products, lemon wedges, shopping carts, and vitamins.

Author Information

Henry Beard attended Harvard University and was a member of the Harvard Lampoon. He went on to found the National Lampoon with Douglas Kenney and served as its editor during the magazine's heyday in the 1970s. He has written numerous bestselling humor books, including Miss Piggy's Guide to Life and (with Christopher Cerf) The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook. Christopher Cerf is an Emmy and Grammy award-winning author, composer, and producer. A charter contributing editor of the National Lampoon, Cerf has written more than 300 songs for Sesame Street and co-edited the celebrated newspaper parody Not The New York Times.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available