Amazon.co.uk Review
Nearly 50 years after the first edition was published,
Guinness World Records isn't so much a book as an institution, having sold over 90 million copies to date, in 23 different languages. Every year, its publishers find ever crazier new achievements to include, for example the live-insect eating capers of England's own Ken Edwards, who's crunched 36 medium-sized cockroaches in one minute. Or Spain's tomatina festival, the world's largest food fight--at the 1999 event 25,000 people spent one hour hurling around 120 tonnes of tomatoes at each other. Then there's French adventurer Remy Bricka, the first man to walk all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. He made it from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean on floating skis 4.2 meters long. It took him 31 days, and when he finally arrived in Trinidad he was reported to have been hallucinating and suffering from severe delirium.
The 2002 edition includes lots of links to the Guinness World Records Web site, so that trivia junkies can feed their addiction even more. Colourfully illustrated--the photos are often very striking--it includes a high proportion of rather eccentric records, such as "most batteries in a work of art" or "most sequined body", which will irritate some readers and delight others. Numerous more "serious" records retain a place, but the emphasis is on the spectacular, sensational and just plain wacky. --David Pickering
Amazon.co.uk Review
From the "Most Downloaded Woman on the Internet" to the "Most Valuable Piece of Madonna Clothing", Guinness World Records 2000 is a shiny departure from former editions. With florescent inside flaps, rainbow-colour coding and hundreds of glossy photos, this glitzy guide has come along way since its inception in 1955. A year earlier, The underbrewer at Guinness thought it would be a good idea to have a book that would answer trivia questions commonly asked at pubs. So, with the help of two record-breaking athletes and their fact-finding agency, The Guinness Book of World Records was born. However, traditionalists be warned: The new-fangled version might be enjoyed most by those under the legal-drinking age. --Susan Queue
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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