Prepare to be even more revolted, flabbergasted, appalled, and completely entertained by this incredible follow-up collection of absolutely true trivia from the author of 5 People Who Died During Sex. Nothing is too insane, too inane, or too sacred for Karl Shaw’s eclectic lists of the world’s very worst. DID YOU KNOW… …that according to recent estimates (2010) your body is worth between $10,000-$100,000 on today’s open market—from companies legitimately trading body parts from willing donors to recognized medical facilities? …that the great plague of Athens in 404, which lead to the defeat of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, was probably caused by contaminated cereals? …that Benjamin Franklin liked to sit stark naked in front of his open windows, calling the practice “taking an air bath”? …that in the last days of his life, the actor Steve McQueen lived on a diet largely comprised of boiled alligator skin and apricot pits, washed down with urine?

10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: and 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists

Humor & Entertainment

Shaw, Karl.

Puzzles & Games

Crown

An 18th-century French scholar attributed the British talent for eccentricity to a "mixture of fogs, beef, and beer . . . aggravated by the tedium of the English Sunday." Whatever the reason, the British Isles do seem to have thrown up more than their fair share of magnificent oddballs, the finest of which are profiled in this fast, funny celebration of over 200 aristocrats, inventors, artists, and the just plain weird. Some included examples are: Dr. Samuel Johnson is said to have shaved off all of his bodily hair, just to see how long it would take to grow back; Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, once related an experience he had at Westminster, "I had a horrid nightmare. I dreamed I was making a speech in the House of Lords, and woke up to find I actually was"; and Percy Bysshe Shelley once tied a cat to a kite in a thunder storm to see if it would be electrocuted. Obviously a romping, roaring good time.

Curing Hiccups with Small Fires

Reference

Pan/Macmillan

Curing Hiccups with Small Fires: A Delightful Miscellany of Great British Eccentrics

Boxtree

Karl Shaw's wickedly disgusting (yet strangely erudite and fascinating) book is a British import that is kind of hard to find, but well worth it for lovers of the gross, historical and trivial.

The Little Book Of Bad Taste

Parragon Publisher

Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Virgin Pub

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy. Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside? Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book. Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe.

All in perfectly bad taste Prepare to be amazed, appalled, disgusted, and hugely entertained by this compendium of indelicate oddities. Nothing is too inane, too insane, too bizarre, or too distasteful for this incredible, seemingly impossible, but absolutely true collection of facts from across the ages and around the world. Did you know… …that Pope Benedict XII was such a hardened boozer that he inspired the expression “drunk as a pope”? (From “10 Historic Drunks”) …that as a special honeymoon treat, Prince Charles read Princess Diana passages from the works of Carl Jung and Laurens van der Post? (From “History’s 10 Least Romantic Honeymoons”) …that the best-dressed gentlemen in medieval England exposed their genitals below a short-fitting tunic? (From “History’s 10 Greatest Fashion Mistakes”) …that Alfred Hitchcock suffered from ovophobia—fear of eggs? (From “10 Phobias of the Famous”) …that King Louis XIV only took three baths in his lifetime, each of them under protest? (From “10 Great Unwashed”) …that in 1930, Sears customers became enraged when the catalog was first printed on glossy, non-absorbent paper? (From “12 Magical Moments in Toilet Paper History”)

5 People Who Died During Sex: and 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists

Oddballs And Eccentrics

Castle

Gathers lists of such tasteless topics as celebrity grave-robberies, ethnic suicides, adulterous British Prime Minsters, phobias of the famous, essential Elvis facts, last meals of condemned murderders, rules of etiquette, and succint pop reviews

The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists (Mammoth Books)

Humor

Running Press

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