Trivia Books

This book enables fans of baseball to see where they really are in regards to their basball knowledge. It is fun for all people no matter what age they are. It is a rather simple book which is why I gave it only 3 stars but it is a book that is a bargain and you cannot beat the kind of book you are getting for that price.

I really hate to say it, but this book was nowhere near what I was expecting. Some of the stories were interesting, and gave me new insight into Georgia's history, but some stories only had a tenuous link to the state, and I found myself questioning their being included in the book. The stories are not that long and therefore not developed in depth; of course this means different things to different people, but for me it just wasn't enough.

I am actually quite surprised at myself for buying this, even more so for buying the two other books in the "trilogy" and completely flabbergasted that I have managed to read them all! This book belongs to the "Books of useless information" series, currently consisting of "The Book of Useless Information", "The Ultimate Book of Useless Information" and the unforgettable "The World's Greatest book of Useless Information". A group of authors created the Useless Information Society and started gathering useless facts. Did you know that in Michigan any person over the age of 12 may have licence for a hand-gun as long as he or she has not been convicted of felony?(!) Or that Mick Jagger turned down a £3.5 million advance on his memoirs from a publishers house because, he said, he "couldn't remember" enough significant details from his own life? Well, now you know, and by buying all three of these books you will learn thousands more. Useless you say? On the other hand, it can be quite good fill-in for speeches and presentations if you don't have much else to say...

As a team trivia player and devoted bathroom reader, this book is right up my alley. However, I am dismayed by the massive number of typos, errors and flubs in this book. Norman Mailer wrote Tropic of Cancer? Really? There are quite a few quizzes that have 11 questions and only 10 answers, or vice/versa. For trivia buffs and fans of the Uncle John books, I'd recommend it, but just be prepared for some frustration with the sloppy proofreading and fact-checking. Overall, it's useful and entertaining enough to overlook some of its problems.

This book came recommended to me by a speaker at a Pampered Chef seminar. It gave some interesting facts and information on all those food topics that you've always wondered about.
Some things were interesting and others are what you've seen everywhere else.
This is a great book for the coffee table.

With some 672 questions covering most theaters of operations in WW II, this little volume covers plenty of ground. I know a lot about the subject but only averaged 77% across the board, partly due to some really esoteric subjects (foreign armored vehicles nomenclature, etc) and partly because some of the "answers" are wrong. For instance, the aces' victory scores reflect scholarship more than 25 years old, and some well-known facts are badly flubbed. (The Doolittle Raiders launched from USS Hornet, not Wasp! If ya seen one bug ya seen 'em all.)

You can spend a few hours of diverting entertainment here, but do not rely on this book for hard facts.

It is a short book filled with facts about World War II. It proved to be very intersting.

This book was enjoyable but to anyone whose grown up in Massachusetts it's like that third pass around of left overs. The book doesn't offer any new insights into tried and true stories. I would say this book is best suited for tourists or newcomes who want to know a little of the customs of the area they are moving too. If you've lived in Boston/Massachusetts or ever taken a trolley tour of the area, this book is below your level.

As a secondary science teacher, and would be philosopher of science, I found Youngson book, "Scientific Blunders" incredibly useful. He addresses areas of science that are not really beyond High School, but his discussions take the mystery out of the "process of science".

Beware that if you have an almost religious conviction to the superiority of science, its scope, aim and process, be prepared to lose a little awe, but gain more respect.

Philosophers?? Certainly, this is worth the read. It will give you the necessary background when debating your hard science counterparts.

Science Majors?? Don't let well organized lectures, and practiced oration fool you. Science does not proceed in such a linear fashion. Scientific Blunders is a necessary read.

do not expect some kind of a breath taking find in the book, the name of this book should be more of a breif history of scientific misconseptions.
good book for easy reading and popular science history, no more but no less as well. nice book to have on the shelf.

The 'Blunders' mentioned in this book are only an excuse to take the reader on an exciting journey through the very broad spectrum of science. You can actually compare this book with a menu card you would get in The Restaurant of Science: a starter of Evolution Theory, a main course of Physics, a slice of Biology and maybe some Technology as a dessert?

The common thread through all these chapters -being how wrong things can get- gives the reader an interesting view on what scientific prove actually means. All scientists are humans (we hope...) and this gives rise to emotional arguments popping up from time to time. What happens when you mix these with experimental research has been illustrated in abundance: carelessness, wrong-headedness, arrogance, moral fear or plain bad luck. Fair, not all 'blunders' are worthy of this tag, quite a lot are just as can be expected from a normal struggle for the truth. But still, science would have been far more advanced if these human influences could have been avoided. But isn't this a utopia?

Although the title might suggest some humorous content, it certainly does not deliver on these expectations. The tongue-in-cheek approach makes the topics quite more readable, but does not reduce the explanations to kindergarten gibberish. It is true that a few facts are plainly wrong, but the main message of the book doesn't suffer from this.

To conclude: it's a nice book intended for a general public and easy to read (I read it on a plane). It lets you browse through popular science in a relaxed manner. Hopefully this will encourage people to dive deeper into the topics they find interesting. But be aware: people who think of science as a sacred institution might get offended by this book.

I suspect many of those who bought this book did so in the hope that it would contain arguments to denigrate science in favor of their own religious/pseudoscientific beliefs. Its effect is just the opposite. It points out clearly that science is a dynamic and testable process that continuously revises and upgrades itself, often to the demise of previously widely subscribed notions where pseudoscience knows no error in itself and thereby is condemned to be erroneous. The author may not be an expert in the details of all the fields he discusses (and who could be?) but his analytic approach is on the mark. It is no wonder that those who are uncomfortable the notion of a changing paradigm are eager to downrate it, they just don't get the point.

Like one of the other reviewers, I was offended by the bad scholarship. The title of the book is "Scientific Blunders" and the aim of the book is to lay bare several misconceptions in the history of science. I had these things in my mind, when I took a deep dive to the book.

In my opinion, the following statement should be pretty obvious: when deciding if something is science or not, one is making value judgement based on a certain conception of science. So, in the introductory chapter I would have excepted to find a definition of science, but couldn't find one. When my reading progressed, I was constantly waiting for the aforementioned definition - but still couldn't find it.

At certain point of my reading, it became clear to me, that the writer is not trying to convince the reader with logically and conceptually sound and coherent proof, but with rhetorics and assertions based on an implicit, narrow and (propably) philosphically poorly justified conception of science. For that reason the word "science" started to look like a magical word, which is somehow mysteriously expected to explain itself. But, it is pointless to continue on this track.

To summarize: the aim of the book is ambitious, but the attempt falls dolefully short. If I had a second chance, I would buy some other book and not waste my money to this... well, rubbish.

Having met and known a number of porn stars during the years that I lived in Washington, DC, I've come to expect that they can be funny, insightful, or at least have an interesting point of view on life's practicalities.

I was expecting some degree of this wit or practical wisdom from this book, but I was terribly disappointed. Further, I think anyone who's read the clever interviews by Jamoo in "Freshmen" magazine will find these snippets really lacking.

If you're looking for something that's both clever and interesting about the porn industry, I'd recommend the video "Shooting Porn," which has far hotter images and far more interesting comments from the participants.

The most desirable men on earth have been interviewed by some brainless author. These well recognized and respectable actors of porn must have been paid top bucks to be interviewed by some prebuscent interviewer...that's fine...but the results are an insult to any intelligence!

This book is fine!I was kinda disappointed that the pictures was not that all great.Those guys was not a cute and sexy as I expected them to be.Some of the story was pretty lame and boring too.

I re-read this book today as I was just sitting around and watching the rain fall. Not only did I get "excited", but I laughed and sighed with pleasure all at the same time.

Can't wait for the sequel or ANY other new books written by this remarkable author extraordinaire !

I'm not saying that porn stars are the most intelligent people in the world, but the quotes are STUPID! I'm sure porn stars have more going on up there than what they're made out to be in the book. The stories are boring. It's like the author was sitting a restaurant near a porn star's table, and overheard only part of what the porn star saying to his friends and tried to write a book about it. The pictures area all in black and white, and there are only a few pictures of any stars of any interest. Most of the stars are "bear types." Not that that's bad, but if you're not into bears.... All and all, this book is a coffee table book, that should be better kept under the coffee table's short leg to keep the table and your coffee cup from tipping over.