Sipping his coffee at the Grove Caffe, Alex Boese, “”curator”” of the Museum of Hoaxes, sits poised to answer inquiries. It takes very little prodding to get a wealth of information from him about everything from his graduate dissertation to his publishing company.

His book, “”The Museum of Hoaxes,”” is a self-described “”collection of pranks, stunts, deceptions and other wonderful stories contrived for the public from the Middle Ages to the new millennium.”” Boese, a graduate student in UCSD’s Science Studies Program, began work on the book without any intention of having his findings published.

“”You hear about authors sending out to agents,”” Boese said. “”I wasn’t even trying to write a book.””

Rather, he was simply compiling research for his dissertation, The Mermaid, The Moon and The Hollow Earth, a study of the relationship between science and mass media.

He began his Web site, http://www.museumofhoaxes.com, as a means of organizing this data. The idea first caught his interest when he learned about the Great Moon Hoax — a story printed in 1835 by the New York Sun claiming that various forms of life, including winged “”man-bats,”” had been discovered on the moon. From this springboard discovery, Boese extended his research to all kinds of hoaxes “”as a way to procrastinate,”” Boese said.

His Web site got so extensive that it became a well-known Internet resource for anything hoax-related. The amount of traffic it saw eventually attracted the attention of USA Today, which did an article on his research. Suddenly, he was getting calls from publishers asking him about writing a book.

“”I just ended up going with the first one that called me,”” Boese said.

His relationship with Dutton Publishing so far has been somewhat cursory, considering that all its representatives are in New York, and he’s here in San Diego. He’s never even met his publicist, Erin Sinesky, but he says she seems nice on the phone.

Boese’s research consisted mostly of random luck.

“”I got a lot of material from odd references,”” he said, meaning that he could have been reading into one thing and then ended up with information about something totally different. For most of the more recent hoaxes, he was able to tap into the LexusNexus Academic Universe, an enormous news database that works like an online version of a microfilm.

One of his goals in writing The Museum of Hoaxes was to put each story into some sort of historical context. The book itself is organized in chronological order, with an introduction to each chapter explaining the significance of hoaxing in the given era. His idea was to “”soft cell the history”” rather than beat his readers over the head with it. Dutton intends to market his work as a “”gift book”” for the holiday season, a sort of instructional stocking-stuffer for curious grandchildren. His casual history lessons should be of great use in that capacity.

When asked what his favorite hoax was, he points to he Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, a broadcast in 1957 by the British news show Panorama that explained the details of harvesting pasta from spaghetti trees. Having lived in England for seven years, Boese says that the “”odd, quirky sense of humor”” of the British really appeals to him. No wonder something as dry as the Spaghetti Harvest beat out more sensational stories, such as the Hitler Diaries or the War of the Worlds as his favorite hoax. He also cited the Great Moon Hoax and the story of Princess Caribou (later made into a movie starring Kevin Klein) as personal favorites. He generally likes the idea of hoaxing because it “”tweaks pretensions,”” he said.

Boese was a teaching assistant for Thurgood Marshall College’s Dimensions of Culture program for four years, but has since stopped teaching to work on his still-unfinished dissertation. He claims his work on the book was influenced by his experience with D.O.C., specifically the material from the 1930s and ’60s. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and before that, attended high school in Washington, D.C.

His research included contacting some of the people involved with the hoaxes, such as professional hoaxer Gorgeous Guy, Joey Scaggs and the owner of Snowball the Monster Cat, Cordell Haughlie. He found inspiration during the creation of this book in the wisdom of Bruno Latour, who once said, “”Scientific facts are social constructions.”” This became the museum’s creed.

The Museum of Hoaxes is in stores November 11.