A compendium of crapulous concepts from absinthe to zorbing From the tiniest nanoparticle to the vast span of the Large Hadron Collider, humans have invented many remarkable things. But not every idea is a winner - just ask 'Friday' singer Rebecca Black. This wonderfully eclectic yet uniformly awful compendium traverses millennia of dreadful concepts, from homeopathy to hacky sacks, from Esperanto to Elmo and from athleisure to the Apple Vision Pro, demonstrating that alongside the magnificent march of human progress are many examples of failure, farce and outright fraud - many of which are far more hilarious than intended. The Dictionary of Terrible Ideas reminds us that no matter how high we may soar, humans are as unreliable as a Bluetooth connection, as irritating as a self-checkout machine, and as prone to making poor decisions as Kanye West - all of which feature inside the turducken of terribleness that is this book.

ドミニク・ナイトが綴る本作は、人類の歩みの傍らにある「愚行」を鮮やかに抉り出した、冷笑的で愛に満ちた人間讃歌です。単なる笑い話を超え、合理性を追う社会の滑稽さや精神的な脆さを鋭く風刺しています。著者のウィットに富んだ語り口は、読者を心地よい自虐と爆笑の渦へと誘い、人間という存在の愛らしさを再認識させてくれます。 映像版では不条理なアイデアが視覚的なカオスとして躍動しますが、原作の真髄は緻密なロジックと文体の切れ味にあります。映像が「出来事」を見せるのに対し、本書は「思考の欠陥」を解剖しているのです。両者を味わうことで、人類という愛すべき欠陥品への洞察は極まり、あなたの知的好奇心はこれ以上なく刺激されるでしょう。