The title comes from a real headline: a widely circulated news item claimed a circus performer had been swallowed by a hippopotamus. It was a hoax. That makes it a fitting title for Alex Boese’s 2006 book, Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.
The author
Boese holds a graduate degree in the history of science and runs the Museum of Hoaxes, a website he started in 1997 that catalogs deceptions through history. Yes, the history of science is a real academic field, and Boese makes a strong case for its usefulness. Understanding how people were fooled in the past is good training for not being fooled now.
What is inside
The book is organized like a field guide, by habitat: hoaxes in advertising, news, politics, science, celebrity culture, the internet and everyday life. Each entry tells the story of a fake, from doctored photos and invented statistics to pranks on gullible reporters and products that promised the impossible. Boese also offers “rules” for spotting deception, such as the observation that if something seems too perfect, it probably is.
How to read it
This is not a book to read straight through. Flip it open at random, and nearly every page offers a strange, funny or alarming true story. It is the ideal bathroom-shelf book, and that is meant as a compliment.
Verdict
Two decades later, in the age of deepfakes and AI-generated images, the book feels less like a novelty and more like a primer. The tools have changed. Human gullibility has not.
Sources: The Museum of Hoaxes; Museum of Hoaxes, Wikipedia.
