The World's Worst: A Guide to the Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept, and Dangerous People, Places, and Things on Earth

By Mark Frauenfelder

Bookstore shelves are lined with tomes dedicated to the finest things that life has to offer. This is all well and good, but the real entertainment is to be found not in the cream of the crop, but at the bottom of the barrel. The World's Worst is a celebration/indictment of nearly 50 infamous and little-known exemplars of the awful. In thoroughly researched, scathingly funny essays, author Mark Frauenfelder avoids the obvious and digs deep to tell the fascinating tales of the worst people, places, and things on Earth for the reader's amusement and edification. Half of the entries are also mischieviously illustrated by the author. Addictively readable, and sure to appeal to fans of the popular Worst-Case Scenario and Darwin Awards series, The World's Worst is hilariously unafraid to wallow in the mire.

Selected Horrible Highlights:
Most Unappealing Fetish
Most Disgusting Coffee Drink
Most Horrific Self-Help Technique
Least Adorable Pet
Saddest Fate for an Island Nation
Worst Molasses Related Disaster

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811846067
• ISBN13: 9780811846066
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

It Can Always Get Worse

Mr. Frauenfelder has scoured the globe for interesting bits of trivia related solely by their ability to horrify. Whether natural perils or stomach turning drunken antics, the book holds one's attention. Perhaps in reading of such events and things we can take solace in our normal and safe lives. Seriously, who first decided to make a drink out of berries scavenged from the dung of a wild cat? Who first opened a fruit that smells like rotting flesh and decided to taste it? My only complaint was that the format was extremely limited. Perhaps in keeping with the jocular tone of the work the author didn't want to get into too much detail, but detail is precisely what makes many of these things fascinating. If you have a friend or acquaintance who is discouraged, this would be an excellent gift. Perhaps we have an innate need to constantly reestablish that things can always be worse.

Super-Duper!

All I can say is that this book was fan-to-the-tastic! I just could not put it down. It kept me so amused that I wanted to go out and give Mark Frauenfelder a big hug. The headless rooster is intruiging and I could read that story all day long. And The Most Stubborn Soldier made my sides split in laughter. And you, dear reader, would be Word's Stupidest Consumer if you didn't buy this immediately.

Outstanding

From the unusual to the bizarre this book holds your interest throughout. You wonder where and how the author was able to research the information provided.

A Short Book on a Long Subject

"The World's Worst" is really entertaining as far as it goes, but a cursory review of this morning's newspaper suggests that it should have been a much longer book. Still, each of the book's fifty short chapters is quite witty and enoyable to read. Among the entries: kopi luwak, the world's most disgusting beverage, which involves processing coffee beans through the digestive tract of a civet cat (can't wait to order that at Starbucks); the most disgusting fruit (the durian, "like eating ice cream in a sewer"); the most gruesome bug bite (revenge of the brown recluse spider); the worst-smelling flower ("corpse flower" says it all); the world's worst molasses-related disaster (it killed 21 people in Boston in January 1919, so apparently "molasses in January" isn't so slow after all); the most disgusting behavior on an airplane (I think I'd rather take my chances with the civet cat); and the lamest former dictator (now living on his Mom's couch). "The World's Worst" is light, fluffy, entertaining and a quick read. And it's very sequel-friendly--the next volume(s) will no doubt be just as amusing.

What a fascinating read!!!

Once again, this awesome author has put together another book that I could not put down! Mark is such a talented writer who found such great sories for all of us to enjoy. This book is filled with such interesting, funny, page-turning short stories it makes me want more, more, MORE!!! Hurry up with book number two on the World's Worst.