Customer Reviews

Contrary to Popular Belief: More than 250 False Facts Revealed

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The book was entertaining and contained some pretty interesting information. A lot of the stuff in there is a stretch, however.
For example:
The book offers the interesting trivia that the western-most point of Virginia is actually west of West Virginia. In my opinion, however, the author is way off base in concluding that "West Virginia is not really west of Virginia".
Another interesting fact: The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo DaVinci, was not called the Mona Lisa until a later period. Thus states the author: "Leonardo DaVinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa."
Another totally inappropriate entry is the author's personal interpretation of the US 2nd Amendment presented as fact.
These are probably the worst items in the book, however, and there was some pretty good information besides.
If you would like a trove of fascinating information, however, I would instead recommend Bill McLain's 'What Makes Flamingos Pink?'

Got this book as a gift. I'm no longer speaking to the person who gave it to me.

Let's bulletpoint. it's easier:

1) Every 5th or 6th page is something about the bible. I should be mad that the author managed to squeeze his beliefs into an anecdotal book, but I'm not. But what I AM mad about is how he is disputing "facts" from the bible - which are things that are ambiguously called facts in the first place. To say Adam and Eve didn't actually eat an APPLE in the Garden of Eden, you dispute FRUIT, arrogantly assuming that the reader first believes that Adam and Eve existed, that they were named Adam and Eve, and that this unproven biblical story is true. And this goes for ALL the biblical "facts" in this book: the author assumes you're Christian and that you believe these bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, etc.) in the first place, and then argues against some silly detail like fruit. Ridiculous.

2) Regardless of religion, this whole book is semantics. The author disproves nothing concrete but uses semantics to hammer idiotic points home. He says Greenland is not called Greenland, it's called Kalaallit Nunaat. It's not. It's called Greenland. To most of the world, Germany is called Germany. To Germans, it's called Deutschland. To most of the world Japan is called Japan. To the Japanese, it's called Nippon, or Nippon-koku if we're getting technical. Greenland is not NOT named Greenland. That's like telling someone from a Spanish speaking country "No, no, no we are not called Los Estados Unidos, we are called The United States." English speaking governments recognize Greenland as Greenland, and since you wrote an English speaking book, you should have the intellect as to understand why.

3) I'm an American, and clearly, clearly so is the "author", and I want to finalize by saying.....this book is why most of the world hates us. Calling these facts "facts" is totally asinine, let alone selling a book that uses semantics to alter minute details. It's unintelligent dribble written to assist Americans in becoming MORE unintelligent: something I personally don't think we can any longer afford.

Sorry for this lengthy rant. I'm embarrassed to have read this book, and almost embarrassed that a publisher thought it was a neat idea to produce. Anecdotal or not, you could probably learn more from watching porn than from reading this nonsense.

Dear Publishers, I will write an entire book - for free - disputing everything in this book. Just let me know, thanks.

This is a great book for astounding your friends with amazing facts. There are so many myths that are revealed as not being true (or not entirely true), you will wonder how so many "legends" evolved into "facts". It is a book you can pick up any time and read for as long or as little as you like. I find it hard to put down. I highly reccommend it.

Most people who read this book will enjoy it. I didn't. If you want to be mildly entertained, you should read this book. If you want to win the debate at a dinner party, skip it. There are several circumstances where a cursory glance at the evidence given may back up Green's claim, but a more detailed look at the question involved will often just leave more questions than answers. A few examples:

"British prisoners did not settle Australia." This is true only in the sense that they were not the first arrivals on the island. But British prisoners didn't settle Australia in the same way Europeans never settled the Americas.

"The shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line." Green goes on to explain this by saying that "the shortest distance for terrestrial travel is an arc, unless you're planning to tunnel through the Earth in a straight line." Wow, really? You claim your heading is a fact, and then you completely acknowledge that your fact is true only in the case where you completely disregard the idea of 'shortest?' Would you tell me that the distance from me to the tree outside my window is actually the number of feet I would have to travel out of my room, down the stairs, and out of the house to get to the tree? No, you wouldn't. And you shouldn't do the same thing here.

"Leonardo da Vinci did not paint the Mona Lisa." Also, Christopher Columbus didn't reach the Americas and my mother didn't give birth to two girls and a boy. Instead, Christopher Columbus reached the Indies, and my mother gave birth to three children, two of whom turned out to be girls and the third of whom turned out to be a boy. Just because at the moment of occurrence the entirety of the situation is not known doesn't mean that the situation did not occur. We call that painting the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci painted that painting. Ergo, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.

Most of the pages in the book are enjoyable . But there are some people like me who will be more frustrated by the one wrong thing than the ten right ones. (Alaska is the easternmost state? Made me throw the book on the ground, pick it up and open it again to make sure I had read it correctly, then throw it on the ground again.) For those of us who are hard to please, this book is a waste of money.

It always amazes me when people go nuts in reviews with respect to books like this. If you are looking for a book where you can pretty much pop it open anywhere, read, smile, and toss a fact into the back of your head, this one is it. You will interesting data points from history, things to give you a smile and even a few things about people that will flip something you thought, 180 degrees. It's a fun book, not a text book, so enjoy it.

matthhew rignanese's review about this book is simply genial; these book (and almost all of them by the way) are debatible and refutable since all of them are based on pure semantics and data that should not be treated as facts nor laws nor truths but just, i repeat, revatible data

This is a fun book to read that can be finished in one evening. It contains a multitude of persons, places and things from history and other places that we have believed wrongly about, and now have been given the correct information. An example is that the Battle of Waterloo did not take place at Waterloo, or that the strawberry really is not a berry. There are others that surprise and, often, shock you, for they dispel preconceived notions we have, or we have been taught, either by teachers or by reading other books.

If you're not particularly interested in cramming your brain with a bunch of facts that are useless to you unless you try to "one-up" another person's knowledge, you might want to skip this book. But if you're like me and just have the yearning to know "just the facts, ma'am" you'll have as much fun from reading this book as I did. It's a question of personal taste.

First published in 2005 by Broadway Books and written by Joey Green, "Contrary to Popular Belief" is a thoroughly enjoyable read. 260 pages long, it contains over 250 facts that aren't facts, and tells the truth about each. I never found it saying "Nixon was not a crook", so maybe that *is* true... Anyway. A ship captain cannot, in fact, perform marriages at sea, Strawberries aren't actually berries, and the deer and antelope most certainly do *not* play, home on the range. Because there are no antelope in North America. And that's just a few examples. Many of this book's facts surprised me; some didn't. But overall, I am glad I bought the book and would recommend it to anybody. Pick one up sometime- I don't think it will disappoint.

Panama hats are from Ecuador, Cleopatra was not Egyptian, and the Pope was not deemed infallable in matters of faith and morals until 1870.

What a fool I have been!

Joey Green will set you back on the right path with this collection of fascinating facts, sure to put you at the head of the class.

Contrary To Popular Belief is a simple book with facts virtually nobody knows. Flip open to any page and learn something new just for fun! Not all facts are equally interesting, but worth the money nonetheless.

4 stars :D