Who's Who  

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Who's Who or Who is Who is the name of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people. It is also used as an expression meaning a collection or group of noted persons; as in the sentence "The actors in the film were a Who's Who of the great American comedians of the time".

The title Who's Who is in the public domain, and thousands of Who's Who compilations of varying scope and quality have been published by various authors and publishers. The oldest and most famous Who's Who is Who's Who (UK), a reference on the British upper class; at its start, in 19th century Britain, this was a smaller and more well-defined set. However, many modern copies are just vanity publications, where the inclusion criterion is the biographee's willingness to buy the book, with the business model consisting of selling books directly to the biographees. These are widely considered to be Who's Who scams.

Notable examples

Similar publications

Some Who's Who books have a title in the language of the country concerned:

  • Croatian: Tko je tko u Hrvatskoj - Who is Who in Croatia, single bilingual edition (1993)
  • Danish: Kraks Blå Bog (since 1910) annually
  • German: Wer ist's? (1905-1935) and Wer ist wer? (since 1951) almost annually
  • Norwegian: Hvem er Hvem? (since 1912) 14 editions in the 20th century
  • Swedish: Vem är det? (since 1912) every second year
  • South Africa: Who's Who of Southern Africa (since 1910) annually




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Who's Who" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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