Heavy Reading

CAMBRIDGE,
Mass. (AP) – A 133-pound tome about the Asian country of Bhutan that
uses enough paper to cover a football field and a gallon of ink has been
declared the world’s largest published book.

Author Michael Hawley, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
said it’s not a book to curl up with at bedtime – "unless you plan
to sleep on it."

Each copy of "Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Kingdom," is
5-by-7 feet, 112 pages and costs about $2,000 to produce. Hawley is charging
$10,000 to be donated to a charity he founded, Friendly Planet, which has
built schools in Cambodia and Bhutan.

Guinness World Records has certified Hawley’s work as the biggest published
book, according to Stuart Claxton, a Guinness researcher.

from AP News