I'd like to propose a duel: Noel Botham's The Best Book of Useless Information Ever against Francesca Gould's more modestly titled Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers & Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body - which, even though it doesn't say so, is competing for the same title.

These are not reference materials; they are not indexed or alphabetized, but only collected into chapters by general categories. Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers - which will hereafter be known as simply Boogers - has chapters dedicated to skin ("Epidermal Ephemera"), poop ("Scatalogical Silliness"), eyes ("Ocular Obscurities") and more. The Best Book of Useless Information Ever - which will hereafter be known as simply Useless - is subdivided into "Where in the World," "Sports Shorts," "Frisky Business," "Marriage Musings," "The Most Gross" and so on. So while you might be inclined to amuse yourself by reading these works, or to occasionally open them while you spend a few moments on the Special Seat, you are not likely to go back to either of them looking for information.

So let's do this under realistic circumstances. You go to sit on the Special Seat, grab a book, open at random and read a page.

On one page of Useless, you learn, among other things, that the basketball player Darrell Griffith's nickname is "Dr. Dunkenstein," that on the pacific island of Nauru, they have the traditional sport of lassoing flying birds, that in Finland there is a popular sport called Vaimonkanto, or "wife carrying," that there are games called "extreme ironing" (which involves ironing) and "hot cockles" (which, played at medieval Christmas parties, involved hitting a blindfolded person, who then had to guess who was doing the hitting) and that one of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan's jockstraps sold at auction for $25,000.

On one randomly selected page of Boogers, you learn the answer to the question, "Is it possible to shrink heads?" As history would have it, this is no simple yes or no question. In 1897, an explorer named F.W. Up de Graff followed a raid by the Jivaro tribe, which lived in Ecuador and Peru. He did not take part in the proceedings, but witnessed the Jivaro kill members of the tribe and cut off their heads - which, it is reported, took some time. After the raid, they took the severed heads back to the camp, cut a slit up the back of the head, peeled off the scalp and face, boiled them in a pot (which made them shrink), sewed up the slit, stuffed them with heated pebbles and shook them until the skin became like leather. The heads were then tanned and stuffed, and although they resembled the victim, they were only the size of a large orange. They were shown off as trophies during festivals.

Any comparative evaluation of these two pages would have to note that while Useless offers a variety of factoids, they are not developed with context and indeed raise more questions than they offer answers. For example, how successful are the inhabitants of Nauru at lassoing those flying birds? How do they draw them close? What kind of birds are they? And what do they do once they are caught?

But more importantly, who paid 25 grand for Nolan Ryan's jock, and how was it subsequently displayed?

Boogers, on the other hand, offers a rather satisfying report on a single subject. It's background on a bit of common intrigue, it comes with historical perspective, it's grizzly, carefully written and generally terrific.

Let's try another random page comparison, shall we? On one page in the "Frisky Business" chapter of Useless, we find two sections, "Pedal to the Metal" and "Humble Origins." In the first we learn that draftsmen make about 27,000 drawings in the development of a new car, that at General Motors the cost of health care for employees now exceeds the cost of steel, that the average car in Japan is driven about 4,400 miles per year, while in the US the average is 8,200 miles per year, that the Malaysian government has banned car commercials featuring Brad Pitt because they are "an insult to Asians," that an English Ford dealership had a 92-year-old employee. In the second section we learn that in their first years Volkswagen sold 330 VW Beetles, Wite Out sold 1,200 bottles, Cuisinart sold 200 food processors, Remington sold eight typewriters, Scrabble sold 532 games and Coke sold 25 bottles. There are a few more bits, but you get the idea. You are left curious about Brad Pitt.

Meanwhile, a page of Boogers answers, "Did Victorian women have bikini waxes?" The answer comes again with plenty of background. While the short and curlies were a taboo subject, and even in their nudes Victorian painters either hid genitalia or painted images without hair, actual hair removal was unheard of. Indeed, Boogers reports, it's said that the art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) was so used to seeing hairless women in paintings that when he first saw his wife's pubes he was so horrified that he never consummated his marriage. The first commercial for female hair-removal products came in a 1915 Harper's Bazaar print ad. The bikini was invented in the '50s. The bikini wax followed soon after.

Buy the book, and you can then read in depth about the difference between Brazilian and Hollywood bikini waxes, which in brief is that the "Brazilian" involves leaving a landing strip, while the "Hollywood" involves total removal. Either one comes at a ridiculous and unjustifiable cost of pain. Take the advice of a dude, girls: Don't do it!

If you've read this far, you know which of these treasure troves wins the duel: Boogers. Its in-depth research, historic references, effective contextualizing and fine writing make it hands- down the better collection of useless information. I plan to keep my copy next to my Special Seat for at least a month.

The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, by Noel Botham and others. Perigee Trade Paperback, 2007, 212 pages, $12.95.

Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers, by Francesca Gould. Penguin Group, paper, 2008, 228 pages, $12.95.