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. 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 A&E each year because of escalator accidents? And if you're crossing your legs right now, you're definitely at serious risk. And you don't even want to know what's on your office mug right now. Guaranteed to make asteroid impacts, planetary pandemics and global warming look like a walk in the park (which is also emphatically not recommended). 'Be afraid- Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf's Encyclopedia Paranoiaca is deadly to the humour averse' Vanity Fair 'An amusing and cruelly accurate cultural critique . Beard and Cerf gleefully fan the flames of our paranoia' Wall Street Journal 'The writing is witty and verbose, almost Monty Python-ish, but the science is good enough that hypochondriacs should be shielded from this book at all costs' Daily Beast.