Nine? Eleven? Bah! Bosh! Give us tens, and in plenty! At last, a book that has never before existed, by the only author to have written it. Gideon Haigh’s The Tencyclopedia—a tribute to the thrall of the decimal.
Here, grouped as never before, Ten Affairs, Aunts, Masses, Mice, Methods, Plans, Principles and Penises. Here, as you have never seen them, Ten Indian Traffic Signs and Ten Flags That Feature Weapons. Here, as you have never read them, a History of Airline Food in Ten Paragraphs and a History of Chopper Read in 10 ½ Chapters.
Words. Pictures. Pages. A cover. Think you’ve seen them all? Think again. The Tencyclopedia is the book that puts decadence back into decade. Nearly.
TEN TENS IN THE TENCYCLOPEDIA
Ten Anagrams of American Presidents
Ten Avatars of Vishnu
Ten National Flags That Feature Weapons
Ten Slurs of the Dutch
Ten Indian Traffic Signs
Ten Fictional Mice
Ten Works Not Written by Coleridge
Ten Bildungsromans
Ten Philanthropic Enterprises of Andrew Carnegie
Ten Pirates
‘Just when you thought every last thing had been written about, along comes 10. Gideon Haigh’s tribute to decimal supremacy is a potentially stupid idea saved by clever thinking and fascinating research. Ten-gallon hats? Sombreros were decorated with up to 10 braids, galons in Spanish. Ten pseudonyms of Voltaire: Dominico Zapata and Dr Good Natur’d Wellwisher for starters.’