Lists of Note

From Leonardo da Vinci to Marilyn Monroe, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Kurt Cobain. Since humans have walked the Earth, they have made all kinds of lists—comforted by the knowledge that everything can be classified, sorted, hierarchized, and organized. As unsettling as the thought may be, one must admit that a world without lists would be quite chaotic. Without to-do lists, shopping lists, wish lists, dictionaries, favorite lists, indexes, catalogs of measures, address books, checklists, and tables of contents, the world would be nothing but an overwhelming jumble of things, and our lives would lack meaning or collective identity. Following his bestseller "Letters of Note," Shaun Usher has once again rummaged through the archives of this world to present in this magnificent new volume the most unusual and remarkable lists in world history.