by Paul Passell and Leonard Ross
Before The Book of Lists and before Internet listicles, people argued what was the best in just about any category. And that was the concept behind The Best, a book that entertainingly lays out what the authors think is the best in dozens of categories – and the reason for it.
I don’t know where the idea or the authors came from, but it was an inspired idea. Covering topics like “The Best Science Fiction Novel” (Arthur Bester’s The Stars My Destination). the best Pepperidge Farm Cookie (Geneva), the Best Television Show (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show), the Best Vice President (which shows that snark existed even back then: William Wheeler, who only lasted a month in office) and many other categories.
It’s really the sort of thing that places like Cracked is doing now, though they didn’t always go for the laughs. But the book was a big enough success to spawn a sequel in 1977, The Best, Encore,* with topics like The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie (Mrs. A’s Choco-Crunch),** the Best Roller Coaster (Thunderbolt in Pittsburgh), and the Best Way to Skin a Cat (dermestid beetles).
The series ended there. The books are extremely dated by now – not only have prices for items gone up, but many of the names are obscure nowadays. Still, it was an nice entertainment that was ahead of its time.
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*by Passell only.
**This was one of their few actual tests comparing what they were talking about. It’s a bogus taste taste, though, since it didn’t include Freihofer’s Chocolate Chip Cookies.
3 comments:
I remember this book. Came out around the same time as Felton and Fowler's BEST, WORST AND MOST UNUSUAL, which was similar. I think THE BEST came out first though. Makes me want to go back and re-read it now.
I had both books from my high school years back then, c. 1978 - I found this page while trying to recall where I had heard of Mandarin Chocolate Sherbet, which the authors of The Best, Peter Passell (who wrote on economics for The New York Times) and Leonard Ross, had named the Best Flavor of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream. In Felton and Fowler's Best, Worst and Most Unusual, whose sequel-inclusive omnibus volume, which I highly recommend for both entertainment and old times' sake, you can get from Abebooks or eBay for around $5 postpaid, the nod for Best Pizza went to Due's out of Chicago, which I du(e)ly sampled on later trips to Chicago. And the entry for Best Magazine, the Anglo-American London monthly Encounter (1953-1991, initially funded in part, secretly, by the CIA, to much controversy after its exposure in 1966), proved lucrative for me when, in 2012, after reading it in its final, declining decade in the mid-1980s, I entered an internet research contest requiring entrants to write, or to revise, an article at Wikipedia on any subject, using as prime research materials articles of our choice from a vast archive of historic magazines, nineteenth and twentieth century, that the sponsors had recently uploaded as full facsimiles to the internet. With my familiarity with Encounter as a student of cultural history specializing in English literary and political magazines, I chose to write a general survey of the history of Encounter rather than the sort of hyperspecialized article the sponsors had expected and, finding the existing stub of an article for Encounter at around 250 words, added about 5,000 more, winning the $10,000 First Prize. So a big thanks to Felton and Fowler for planting the idea in me thirty-four years prior.
In the aftermath of the latest instance, however inadvertent, of robbing Peter to pay Paul, let us note that the co-author of "The Best" is Peter Passell, not Paul :->.
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