The Guinness Book of Records or in recent editions Guinness World Records is a book published annually, containing an internationally recognized collection of superlatives: both in terms of human achievement and the extrema of the natural world.

Recent editions have focused on record feats by human competitors. Competitions range from obvious ones such as weightlifting to the more entertaining ones such as longest egg-throwing distance or the number of hot dogs that can be consumed in 10 minutes (although it no longer accepts eating contest style entries, possibly for fear of litigation). Besides records about competitions, it contains such facts as the height of the tallest human, the heaviest tumour, which is the most poisonous plant, etc.

Each edition contains a subset of the larger set of records in the Guinness database, and the choice reflects the year of publication.

It first appeared in Britain in 1955, having been commissioned by the Guinness brewery as a book for settling bar bets. It was written by Ross and Norris McWhirter, twins and noted British athletes and journalists, who continued to publish it and related books for many years.

A number of spinoff books and television series have been produced.

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