If you haven’t seen this book around, you haven’t been in a bookstore for the past five years; it was ubiquitous. If you’ve seen it but never bothered to pick it up and flip through a few pages, you’ve done yourself an unspeakable disservice. If you did bother to pick it up, I’ll bet hard currency that you couldn’t stop at just a few pages and you probably had to wipe sweet tears of joy (and possibly shame) from your cheeks before you were done.

James Innes-Smith didn’t have to do anything clever with his life after compiling this delightful little picture tome of some truly regrettable hairstyles of yore, but then a year later, capitalizing on the ridiculous success of Bad Hair, he came out with the companion book, Big Hair.

The link points to an independent bookseller; Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble both have enough of your money already, and besides, the folks at Powell’s in Portland, OR used to be really good to me back in the day.

[Of course, part of Alex’s paycheck comes from Amazon referral fees, so I say go ahead and buy Bad Hair and Big Hair from Amazon if you like. - Ed.]