The Crackpot Compendium

‘This brilliant compendium of oddities, flawed geniuses and sheer lunatics is the latest book from Edward Brooke-Hitching… In a world in which AI is subsuming original human thought, these crazy stories are a refreshing relief.’ – Country Life

'It is an utterly delightful book which gives a wonderful tour through the innovative, the impressive and the downright deranged. I loved reading it' – Fergus Butler-Gallie, author of A Field Guide to the English Clergy

A truly mind-boggling and fascinating A-Z of history’s most eccentric thinkers.

Filled to bursting with jaw-droppingly strange episodes from history, The Crackpot Compendium is a riotous tour of crackpot inventors, false prophets, quacks and pseudo-scientists, con-artists and impostors, and hundreds of other truly ‘outside-the-box’ thinkers.

Discover stories of dinosaur espionage, earthquake-predicting plants and leech barometers, cat pianos and canine translation devices, immortal adventurers, cities spotted on the Moon and aliens living on the Sun. This colossal collection travels the world and across the millennia to take in telepathic Soviet circus clowns, Scottish abominable snowmen, Welsh prophets, ancient Chinese test pilots, invisible African mountains, and the aviator known as ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan who accidentally flew backwards across the Atlantic.

If you have ever wondered how to build a pigeon death-ray, start a snake cult with a hand-puppet, interrogate a houseplant or perform psychic surgery, The Crackpot Compendium will provide the answers (while also probably leaving you with a few new questions.)