For generations Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has been hailed not only as a serious work of reference, but also as a treasury of the fascinating, the serendipitous and the downright peculiar. Brewer's Brewer's Cabinet of Curiosities is an irresistibly browsable collection of bizarre and out-of-the-way information, with a strong phrase-and-fable slant, but also including anecdotes, odd news reports, quotations, superstitions, tall tales and frankly unbelievable truths. As in the Cabinets of Curiosities of 17th- and 18th-century collectors and connoisseurs, Brewer's Cabinet of Curiosities has a myriad drawers, cupboards and hidden compartments, wherein the reader may be lost for ever in search of the next freakish specimen or startling revelation. The structure, to suit the leisurely dipper-in, is thematic, and in all there are nigh-on a dozen main sections, with many subdivisions, features, lists, etc., together with a generous smattering of illustrations of the unexpected, the unlikely and the really quite extraordinary.