The Book of Lists

Acknowledgements

The authors warmly thank Flora Wallechinsky for long hours of typing, organising and troubleshooting, Elijah and Aaron Wallechinsky and Macho Boubekour for help with typing, and Jaime Loucky for his creative research. Our love and thanks to our mother for her support and encouragement. To Chris Fishel, for his wonderful work and ingenuity as staff writer; to Danny Biederman for organising the celebrity lists; to Scott Bradley, for his work as researcher and writer of celebrity biographies and as editor with Amy; to Allison Berry, for abstracting texts and research. Warm thanks to Jamie Byng, our publisher at Canongate Books, whose vision and enthusiasm inspired us throughout. And with gratitude to Canongate’s wonderful and enthusiastic staff, including our two editors, Helen Bleck and Nick Rennison. Thanks also to our agents, Ed Victor, for his long, long support of The Book of Lists series, and Wendy Shmalz, the model of equanimity and humour. And special thanks to Jeremy Beadle for being available for consultations, for providing good advice and for always being a friend in need.

Amy would like to extend special thanks to Allison Berry for helping to keep her life running and to Scott Bradley for having saved his school lunch money at 13 to buy The Book of Lists, only to grow up to become part of its creation; and to Richard Jennings for support and keeping the wolves from the door.

This edition would not have been possible without the many people who worked on previous editions of The Book of Lists, in particular Vicki Baker, Carol Orsag-Madigan, Anita Taylor, Helen Ginsburg, Elizabethe Kempthorne, Judy Knipe, Fern Bryant, Roger Fadness, Lee Clayton and Torene Svitil.

Most of all, we wish to thank the millions of readers who wondered, and the many who asked ‘When is the next Book of Lists coming out?’ We welcome ideas and contributions from our readers for future editions; and thank you all for helping us create a genre that has lasted for three decades, and is more popular than ever.

The authors can be reached at viciousgnu@aol.com