Hippo Eats Dwarf by Alex Boese

Boese is the author of A Museum of Hoaxes, both in its original on-line form and the subsequent book. Hippo Eats Dwarf is a brand extension, in which Boese goes beyond deliberate hoaxes -- though there are plenty of those in Hippo as well -- to include confusions, misunderstandings, scams, and other things that are not as they seem.

I read it in bound galley form, even though it was published in April of 2006. (April 1st, unless I miss my guess) My unread piles are wide and deep, and contain multitudes. So if I get any facts wrong, I'm going to claim that's how it was in the galley.

The subtitle is "A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.," and the book is divided into sixteen chapters, from Birth to Death. (With stops at Romance, eBay, Advertising, Politics, War, and Photography along the way.) Boese has a breezy, Internet-age style, with lots of call-out boxes and section breaks; Hippo Eats Dwarf reads as much like a magazine or a blog as a book -- it's very easy to pick it up, read two pages, and put it back down for a while.

There's a lot of Internet material here -- probably because the 'net has ushered in a golden age of hoaxes -- but Boese also thoroughly covers hoaxes and other deceptive tactics in other media and in every day life. Hippo Eats Dwarf functions as a decent listing of all of the things that people sometimes try to convince us, but that are not true.

I am not the expert on hoaxes that Boese is, but, as far as I can tell, he's quite solid; he doesn't claim any whoppers as fact but does bring up unlikely things that were actually true (or, in some cases, that became true because the idea was publicized).

If you have a friend, mother, or maiden aunt who is forever forwarding you emails about Microsoft's newest payment scheme, or hitting the ceiling about a bonsai kitten -- and you have reason to believe she might actually read a book and learn something -- this is the perfect gift. Hippo Eats Dwarf isn't one of the great works of Western Civilization, but it just might help to reduce the amount of stupidity and ignorance in the world, and that might be even more important.