Word: compendium
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...doubts lingered about Baker's staying power, his newest compendium--Poor Russell's Almanac, his eighth book--should dispel them. A "retooled" and "retrofitted" edition of his 1972 version with the same name, the Almanac is less overtly political than other Baker books such as So This is Depravity. That work, Baker addicts will recall, answered the Big Questions--queries like "Is it true that [former president] Zachary Taylor liked to be spanked by older women?" (no) and "Wasn't George Washington once treated for an Oedipus complex?" (yes, but it was accidental), Instead, the revamped Almanac offers an hysterical...
Poor Russell's Almanac will never achieve the fame of its forebear, Ben Franklin's legendary compendium of minutiae. Indeed, the $12 edition Baker has targeted at holiday shoppers might be worth skipping until the inevitable paperback appears. But read the newest Almanac and cherish Baker's insights. It is a rare man who can so aptly criticize America's foibles and still maintain a sense of humor. Baker does it better than anyone...
...kitsch of the season is Dime-Store Days (Penguin; 128 pages; $12.95) by Lester Glassner and Brownie Harris. Lovingly assembled by a five-and-ten freak and movie junkie, this compendium of glittering gimcracks from the '30s and '40s provides a deep wallow in nostalgia. Among the glories of Woolworthlessness are cutouts of Carmen Miranda with the plaster-banana wall plaques she inspired, a Charlie McCarthy paper doll "with movable mouth," and a lurid World War II poster of a starlet straddling a bomb inscribed TOKYO EXPRESS...
...critics Dave Marsh and Kevin Stern is chock-full of lists of groups with the worst names, the best clothes and other minutiae. Christgau's Record Guide by Village Voice critic Robert Christgau describes--and grades--the rock albums of the past decade. And The Compleat Beatles, a $13.95 compendium of sheet music, interviews and pictures, makes a wonderful goft for the avid Beatle fan, though not for the relative who didn't get "Sgt. Pepper" until last Yuletide...
...books because it is by a journalist who had to ask doctors and males the questions instead of answering them on the basis of lifelong medical or therapeutic research. The Best of Dear Abby devotes a full chapter to the chronic world-wide problem of snoring spouses. In the compendium's final chapter of funny and pathetic letters, one woman writes earnestly "It there anything in insecticides that excite a man?...(Arthur) gets especially aroused right after he sprays our2