"An amusing and cruelly accurate cultural critique" (The Wall Street Journal), this informative and utterly debilitating compendium explores the many surprising ways you might die a horrible death. DID YOU KNOW THAT CARROTS CAUSE BLINDNESS AND BANANAS ARE RADIOACTIVE? That too many candlelight dinners can cause cancer? And not only is bottled water a veri-table petri dish of biohazards (so is tap water, by the way) but riding a bicycle might destroy your sex life? In Encyclopedia Paranoiaca, master satirists Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf have assembled an authoritative, disturbingly comprehensive, and utterly debilitating inventory of things poised to harm, maim, or kill you--all of them based on actual research about the perils of everyday life. Thoroughly sourced and conveniently alphabetized for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (But it probably won't.)