Americans and Brits of a certain age—those who spent much, if not all, of their childhoods in a pre-digital world—once held a certain reverence for the Guinness Book of World Records . At once a compendium of gross-out factoids (the photo accompanying “longest fingernails” is seared in my brain) and historical details, it was the authoritative source of things to make you go “whoaaaa” in the school library. But if you’ve reflected on it for even a moment as an adult, it’s impossible not to