WD Editors

Hatch’s Order of Magnitude: Methodical Rankings of the Commonplace and the Incredible for Daily Reference by a Man of Extraordinary Genius and Impeccable Taste
by Michael Hatch
ISBN: 1-58297-495-0
$14.99, 240-272p, 50 illus

For word lovers and mavens of the trivial, this eccentric reference groups words according to similarity in meaning, but arranges the words in order of magnitude. Hatch’s Order of Magnitude is refreshing for people who poke at the boundary of knowledge by repeatedly asking: “What’s more than that?”

For people who work with words, or people who just get a kick out of words, this book will fulfill the desires of all those spongy minds who share the author’s own curiosity for outliers. This book has the benefit of being both a solid reference—in terms of its thesaurus attributes—as well as a fun, browsable book. While some of Hatch’s lists have informational use—such as degrees of distance—nearly every list has an element of whimsy, especially lists such as degrees of flat circular bread. There is also a little bit of naughtiness–degrees of hotness of women/men or drunkenness.

This book is a tool for writers, a catalyst for debate, a handrail for the imagination, and much more. The declarative audacity of this book sparks discussion from regular folks to taxonomists, stand-up comics to lexicographers, writers, teachers, and other language professionals and enthusiasts. The book endlessly identifies the Best, Worst, Least, Most, Biggest, Smallest, Hottest, Coldest, in short, the Ultimate.