Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting facts
November 12, 2017
This is a nonfiction book filled with interesting pieces of trivia, arcane historical facts, and tidbits of little known knowledge, each little piece made bite-sized and easy to understand for the common man.
The book has something for everybody, literally. The subjects contained in this book vary from art museums for only bad art, to zip-ties scaring away magpies, and from Andy George's $1500 sandwich to Zachary Taylor coining the term "First Lady". It has a handy index to find what you want, and the website resources for the author's material are listed thoroughly in the back if you are interested in learning more. Warning: such a diverse range of subjects does include several that are rather crude and/or adult in their nature, so this is not a book that children should read, as harmless as it may appear.
On the negative side, I don't think that this book should be called an "encyclopedia", because it is very random in its layout and is not organized at all. Webster's 1828 Dictionary states that an encyclopedia must be alphabetized to fall under that name. Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary has a slightly broader definition: it says an encyclopedia has to be systematically arranged. This book is neither.
Also on the negative side, the book sometimes goes to unreliable resources on the web (such as Twitter and YouTube), and several things that the author states as fact seem rather skeptical to me. I don't think the author is lying, not at all, and that isn't what I mean. I simply think that some of the information he was going on might have been exaggerated or incorrect. There's a lot of that on the internet.
There were a few things that I didn't like about the book, but the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion. I'd give it 3 1/2 stars, or possibly 4.
