Books: Towering Trivia

THE PEOPLE'S ALMANAC

by DAVID WALLECHINSKY and

IRVING WALLACE 1,478 pages. Doubleday. $7.95.

Novelist Irving Wallace and his son David Wallechinsky* justify this massive expenditure of paper and ink with forthright immodesty: "Where the familiar, standard almanacs leave off and stop—well, that's where The People's Almanac begins." They are incontestably correct. Among the items not to be found in standard almanacs but present here: summaries of every game played in the Little League World Series; a biography of Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck's miserly uncle; pop psychohistories of selected U.S. Presidents, including Truman ("Harry was a...

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