Tall Tales

"Anatomy is destiny," Freud famously wrote. Since caveman times, humans have had practically sacred attitudes towards height. Bill Walker, a near 7-foot tall globetrotter, has produced a highly entertaining book-Tall Tales-on this much underrated subject. Walker ruthlessly submerges his ego to tell a ream of strange, but true, real-life stories. These include flunking the physical to enter the U.S. Army, suffering rejection by horrified members of the opposite sex, and being treated like a wild animal escaped from the zoo in foreign countries. Walker expands the discussion beyond himself to include some intriguing issues: --the infamous Napoleonic short man's complex. And how about its inverse for tall people--the ostrich complex? --What is one to make of the avalanche of studies that show tall people consistently make more money than their shorter counterparts, and win almost every presidential election? --Most of history's mass-murderers have been well to the short side. Is this merely a coincidence? --A closer, more revealing, look at the lives of 7'1 1/2" Wilt Chamberlain, 7'2 1/2" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 8'11" Robert Wadlow, and 6'5" Abraham Lincoln. --Why short and small may well be the wave of the future.