2009 Internet Directory

Vince Averello, Mikal E. Belicove, Nancy Conner, Adrienne Crew, Sherry Kinkoph Gunter and Faithe Wempen

If it wasn’t for the year printed in the title, one might assume that this book was a pre-Y2K relic. The 2009 Internet Directory essentially amounts to a phone book for the Internet, and the attempt to provide a blueprint for the Web brings back memories of 14.4k modems and floppy disks. Truly shocking though is that it’s effective on some level. Sure, you won’t find a listing for Rainbow Brite fan fiction, but the basics such as travel, food, taxes, sports and mainstream entertainment are all here. The content is expansive—the book surprisingly included most of my Favorites list—so this could appeal to someone who doesn’t want to sift through the unreliable sites that overwhelm Google results. Excluded is porn, probably because it would have turned the 528-page book into a 36-volume set; Volume 1: Aardvark-Anal.