Christopher Cerf

Victor S. Navasky

Gathers lies, misinformation, and errors propagated by experts in science, politics, construction, technology, broadcasting, sports, art, music, and business

The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation

The Experts Speak

Peter Elbling

Tony Hendra

A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade, 1980-1989

The 80s

Henry Beard

IGNORE THIS BOOK AT YOUR PERIL! 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 veritable 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. Painstakingly alphabetized, cross-referenced, and thoroughly sourced for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (Apologies in advance if it doesn’t.) Beard and Cerf cite convincing evidence that everyday things we consider healthy—eating leafy greens, flossing, washing our hands—are actually harmful, and items we thought were innocuous— drinking straws, flip-flops, neckties, skinny jeans— pose life-threatening dangers. Did you know that nearly ten thousand people are sent to the emergency room each year because of escalator accidents, and, despite what you’ve heard, farmers’ markets may actually be less safe than grocery stores? And if you’re crossing your legs right now, you’re definitely at serious risk. Hilarious, insightful, and, at times, downright terrifying, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca brings to light a whole host of hidden threats and looming dooms that make asteroid impacts, planetary pandemics, and global warming look like a walk in the park (which is also emphatically not recommended). *** The Definitive Compendium of Things You Absolutely, Positively Must Not Eat, Drink, Wear, Take, Grow, Make, Buy, Use, Do, Permit, Believe, or Let Yourself Be Exposed to, Including an Awful Lot of Toxic, Lethal, Horrible Stuff That You Thought Was Safe, Good, or Healthy; All Sorts of Really Bad People Who Are Out to Get, Cheat, Steal from, or Otherwise Take Advantage of You; and a Whole Host of Existential Threats and Looming Dooms That Make Global Warming, Giant Meteors, and Planetary Pandemics Look Like a Walk in the Park (with Its High Risk of Skin Cancer, Broken Bones, Bee Stings, Allergic Seizures, Animal Attacks, Criminal Assaults, and Lightning Strikes)

Encyclopedia Paranoiaca

In a pasture in Kansas one early spring morn A horse quite unlike other horses was born. His coat was coal black so they named the horse “Blackie,” And before very long folks found out he was wacky! Meet Blackie, the stubbornly motionless equine hero of Christopher Cerf and Paige Peterson's delightful and touching biography-in-verse, Blackie, The Horse Who Stood Still. See, most colts are frisky but Blackie was not. Blackie liked standing still! Yes, he liked it a lot! “What's the hurry?” thought Blackie. “There's so much to see Standing here in the shade of a juniper tree….. This (mostly) true tale tells the heart-warming story of a horse who made standing stock-still a lifelong endeavor—while becoming a champion rodeo horse, a tourist favorite at Yosemite Park, a legendary environmental crusader, and the beloved mascot of one of America's most beautiful towns, Tiburon, California, on the shores of San Francisco Bay. The word quickly spread 'bout the new horse in town And from all 'round the county young kids headed down To the pasture where Blackie could always be found Standing still, like a rock, on the same patch of ground. Magically illustrated by Peterson's lyrical paintings, Blackie is destined to become a children's classic in the tradition of Munro Leaf's Ferdinand the Bull and Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, The playful, clever, rhyming text will charm adults and children alike as it delivers an important message about appreciating and preserving the natural beauty around us. “What a beautiful place!” Blackie thought when they got there, “I simply can't wait just to stand in one spot there And watch a gull soar, or a tree gently sway, Or the fog rolling in from the hills 'cross the bay…

Blackie, the Horse who Stood Still

Spinglish—the devious dialect of English used by professional spin doctors—is all around us. And the fact is, until you’ve mastered it, politicians and corporations (not to mention your colleagues and friends) will continue putting things over on you, and generally getting the better of you, every minute of every day—without your even knowing it. However, once you perfect the art of terminological inexactitude, you’ll be the one manipulating and one-upping everyone else! And here’s the beauty part: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, authors of the New York Times semi-bestseller The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, have compiled this handy yet astonishingly comprehensive lexicon and translation guide—a fictionary, if you will—to help you do just that. If you want to succeed in business (or politics, sports, the arts, or life in general) without really lying, this is the book for you! (Your results may vary.) Spinglish includes these nifty bits of spurious verbiage and over a thousand more: aesthetic procedure – face-lift dairy nutrients – cow manure enhanced interrogation techniques – torture “For your convenience.” – “For our convenience.” hands-on mentoring – sexual relations with a junior employee incomplete success – failure rightsizing – firing people zero-tasking – doing nothing With each and every entry sourced from some of the greatest real-life language benders in the world today, you’re virtually guaranteed to have the perfectly chosen tried-and-untrue term right at the tip of your forked tongue. Wish you could nimbly sidestep a question without batting an eye? Not sure how to apologize while also . . . not apologizing? Spinglish has you covered. Simply consult this convenient, shoot-from-the-lip glossary, and before you know it, you’ll be telling it like it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it couldn’t ever have been.

The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language

Spinglish

Joe Raposo

Tony Geiss

Jeff Moss

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Easy-to-play arrangements for piano, guitar, and voice for your favorite "Sesame Street" classics by Jeff Moss, Joe Raposo, Christopher Cerf, Tony Geiss, Stephen Lawrence, Sam Pottle, and other "Sesame Street" songwriters. 40 songs in all, including: ABC-DEF-GHI * Bein' Green * Born to Add * "C" Is for Cookie * Elmo's Song * The Grouch Song * I Love Trash * La La La * People in Your Neighborhood * Rubber Duckie * Sesame Street Theme * Sing * Somebody Come and Play * and more.

The Sesame Street Songbook

A playful easy reader in the tradition of Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop that teaches the basics of word construction. From award-winning humorist Christopher Cerf comes a super-simple, delightfully silly Beginner Book in which the rhymed text and the position of the words on the page teach the basics of word construction. Written in the style of Dr. Seuss's classic Hop on Pop with rhyming words placed directly above each other to show their shared construction, A Skunk in My Bunk! combines phonics and word recognition to make learning to read easy--and fun! With bright, charming illustrations by Nicola Slater, kids will be delighted to read for themselves about a goat in a coat in a boat in a moat, a pig in a wig dancing a jig, a skunk in a bunk, and much, much more! Launched in 1957 with The Cat in the Hat and written specifically for emergent readers, Beginner Books combine an exacting blend of simple words and fun pictures that encourage children to read--all by themselves.

A Skunk in My Bunk!

A humorous send-up of political correctness in dictionary form

The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook

Paige Peterson

Born on the Kansas plains, Blackie likes to stay in one place rather than risk missing anything, but when he is gently persuaded to try other things, Blackie finds wonderful new things to enjoy wherever he stands.

The Horse Who Stood Still

Blackie

Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq is the definitive collection -- systematically categorized, indexed, and footnoted for your convenience -- of authoritative misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies, about the Iraq War. "Never before has such a large and diverse group of experts been so unanimously in favor of a particular national policy as they were in the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq," note Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, who, as co-founders of the Institute of Expertology, the nation's leading purveyor of expertise on expertise, were uniquely qualified to assemble this impressive collection. "In the face of such a consensus, we had no choice but to ask ourselves, 'Could the iron law of expertology -- the experts are never right -- be wrong?'" At once an entertainment, a cautionary tale, a critique of mass media, a reference tool, and a postwar manifesto, Mission Accomplished! presents, as no book has before, the collective wisdom of all those who are presumed to know what they talking about on the subject of America's adventure in Iraq. As this hilarious, yet depressing, volume demonstrates, they don't. From MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." -- President George W. Bush, May 1, 2003 "[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces." -- L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, November 17, 2003 "Military action will not last more than a week." -- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, January 23, 2003 "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." -- President George W. Bush, at a White House menorah lighting ceremony, December 10, 2001

Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq

Despite the torrent of coverage devoted to war with Iraq, woefully little attention has been paid to the history of the region, the policies that led to the conflict, and the daunting challenges that will confront America and the Middle East once the immediate crisis has ended. In this collection, Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, coeditors of the acclaimed Gulf War Reader, have assembled essays and documents that present an eminently readable, up-to-the-moment guide -- from every imaginable perspective -- to the continuing crisis in the Gulf and Middle East. Here, in analysis and commentary from some of the world's leading writers and opinion makers -- and in the words of the key participants themselves -- is the engrossing saga of how oil economics, power politics, dreams of empire, nationalist yearnings, and religious fanaticism -- not to mention naked aggression, betrayal, and tragic miscalculation -- have conspired to bring us to the fateful collision of the West and the Arab world over Iraq. Contributors include: Fouad Ajami George W. Bush Richard Butler John le Carré Noam Chomsky Ann Coulter Thomas Friedman Al Gore Seymour Hersh Christopher Hitchens Arianna Huffington Saddam Hussein Terry Jones Robert Kagan Charles Krauthammer William Kristol Nicholas Lemann Kanan Makiya Kevin Phillips Kenneth Pollack Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice Arundhati Roy Edward Said William Safire Jonathan Schell Susan Sontag George Will

Christopher Cerf

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