Customer Reviews

Einstein's Refrigerator and Other Stories from Flip Side Of

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great book for adults and kids. Some of the stories are hilarious, others outrageous, and most very educational. Ever wonder about the origin of kitty litter, why the inventor of Vaseline ate a spoonful every day, or how a college kid saved the NY Citicorp tower from falling over? Maybe not, but you'll be entertained by these humorous, but true stories of inventions, disasters and mishaps.

Everyone has heard of urban legends, those absolutly true accounts of apocryphal events which are truer with every telling. Usually, they represent an exaggeration, a fabrication or an outright hoax. In Einstein's Refrigerator, author Silverman serves up a host of stories collected from his Useless Information web site that sound much like urban legens, but aren't; each is absolutely true and substantiated. Ever hear the one about the guy who attached helium balloons to a lawn chair, then used a rifle to pop the balloons one by one to descend? Really happened! Or the one about the salvage company that raised a sunken ship by filling it with millions of ping-pong balls, inspired by a Donald Duck comic book? Also happened! The volume suffers though from a lack of cohesion; it is less a book than a collection of anecdotes. As a collection of conversation-starters or bet-settlers the book is at least as good as the compilations of urban legends from Thomas J. Craughwell and others and a pleasant diversion for those odd moments of down time.

Books can often be divided into two categories: those that are well researched and informative, and those that are entertaining. "Einstein's Refrigerator" manages to be both. As a teacher I appreciate the time and effort Steve Silverman has put into verifying the authenticity of each of his bizarre tales,something missing from other books in this genre. His wry tone and informal style will attract the interest of even the most reluctant readers. I'm sure Einstein would be proud to be associated with Mr. Silverman's amusing collection of stories.

I have enjoyed reading this sort of stuff ever since I was a kid and that's 60 years ago.This book is a bunch of short articles about people and things that have happened in somewhat recent history ,which will never appear in history textbooks,but very interesting nonetheless. If you read some of the other reviews,you'll see what some of these things are.There are about 30 weird items covered in the book.So,no need for me to repeat.
The interesting thing to someone like me who has enjoyed this sort of thing is what has changed so much by the people who dig up and publish this stuff.
I first got interested in this trivia by reading Ripley's Believe It or Not!.His cartoons were a daily and weekly sort of thing in newspapers and read by just about everyone.He was the real inventor of this popular interest;that is he more than anyone else ,made it so popular.He travelled the world searching out the unbelievable,and because of that he was known as "The Modern Day Marco Polo".I have several dozen of his books and there are many Ripley museums and now even TV shows.Ripley was one of the most well known people and most interesting characters in the western world.There were many others who published similar stuff ;but none even came close to the 'master'.
A couple of things are interesting about this book.First ,the author is a relatively unknown and in no sense the 'bigger than life character' that Ripley was.Ripley had to travel the globe or depend on people to send him material.No need to do that anymore.A person needs only access to the net ,and away he goes.If you read something in Ripley,s,that would be about the end of it.Further information would be very diffult to come by,especially if one lived in a small town.With the sories in this book the author gives a lot of references which would lead one on to many ,many more, all from your desk and the net.
The author has a terrific web site 'Steve Silverman's Useless Information'jam-packed with similar stories.Oh,by the way,even though your local newspaper probably no longer carries the Ripley's Believe It or Not cartoons ,there is an excellent Ripley's Website that does.
I am glad someone still publishes this stuff as I've had a ton of enjoyment over the years reading ;Stranger than Fiction,Greatest Inventions,World's Biggest Blunders,Weird but True,Did you Know?,World's Dumbest Inventions,World's dumbest Criminals,World's strangest Places,and on and on. However,Silverman has shown how the Net has made the amount of this information that is available,virtually limitless.
As with everything,when something new comes along, something old disappears.
With me,it's the characters like Ripley who are becoming the thing of the past,and I believe we are all a little poorer for it.

Liked most of stories - bizarre and funny at the same time. Seriously - a headless chicken? Purchasing it for my Kindle was a problem though - the pictures weren't the best quality. An ok resource for creative thinking - especially for the price of $0.00.

Great book filled with amazing, funny and true stories from history. Some of the stories are great read alouds for my fifth grade students!

All science teacher's should be like Steve! In a search to find the most interesting and obscure facts in history, this book is the champion. Many people find urban legends an irresistible read, and at first glance you would expect as much from Steve Silverman. The most amazing thing about it is these are, in fact, all true! From the secret of America's first subway to the near disaster of the Citicorp Tower, these stories are guaranteed to keep you reading on. Who would of thought that the screen siren Hedy Lamarr was actually a genius inventor that gave us the idea behind the cordless phones we all use today, and also brought about one of the biggest advances in our nations military technology? Or the fascinating The Lake Peigneur Disaster, where one false move by an oil rig made an entire lake disappear! This in one book I highly recommend. If you're looking for serious literary work, go buy Chaucer. If your looking for some good, light hearted humorous reading along the lines of Larry Gonick from "A Cartoon History Of The Universe", this one is for you.

This is a pretty lightweight book, consisting of humorous and bizarre stories of weird history, reprinted from Silverman's "Useless Information" website. But Silverman freely admits that he's not trying to be dense or research-oriented, and just wants to provide some fun reading. In this regard, the book works well as an enjoyable and breezy diversion, and offers light reading for a day when you want to beat the blahs and feed your mind a little. Silverman isn't even trying very hard - the different sections of the book have trite titles like "Oops," "Hmmm," and "Unbelievable" (I wonder why he bothered), and in a rather annoying way he ends every single story with the line "Useless? Useful? I'll Leave That For You to Decide." But the stories are quite enjoyable and often very informative in an offbeat way. Favorites include the stories about the invention of Vaseline and kitty litter, the truly bizarre story of a lake disappearing into a collapsed salt mine in Louisiana, and of course Einstein's refrigerator. (In case you're wondering, Einstein really did invent a new type of refrigerator, but it wasn't practical for home use. His technology is now used in nuclear reactors.) The best story in the book is the one on the unappreciated genius Nikola Tesla, which has encouraged me to read more about this man's accomplishments. Plus, you just gotta love the bat bomb.

Note: I recommend Silverman's "Useless Information" website, which contains the type of stories found in this book, and is another enjoyable diversion when you're at a boring job with online access.

Einstein's Refrigerator reminds me of the Paul Harvey radio spot that used to appear every noon, decades ago.

He'd tell an interesting little story, break for an advertisement, and then tell you (dramatic pause) the REST of the story. The pieces were well constructed according to a formula, and if you think formulaic writing is bad writing, I beg you to reconsider. It's no different than a baker using a recipe, to ensure that the bread he baked yesterday, bakes today, and will bake tomorrow is consistently good. That's the reason people flock to chain restaurants - they know exactly what to expect.

In Paul Harvey's case, one of the tricks he often used was to use an incomplete name - and when he told you that Donald John was the first name, the whole name was Donald John Trump, listeners hit their forehead with the heel of their hand, saying "I should've guessed that." Paul Harvey even did that with his own name, and his son, writer Paul Harvey Aurandt, Jr. used the family name, Paul Aurandt, before stepping into his father's shoes and using the Paul Harvey, Jr. name.

The strength - and weakness - of Einstein's Refrigerator is that it's a series of stories about different topics, connected only by the fact that they're all written to the same entertaining formula. The Jeff Goldblum character in The Big Chill deprecates the magazine he works for, a clone of People magazine, because the short articles are the perfect length for reading while on the toilet. It's not just People magazine, though, it's Reader's Digest, and Guideposts - and this book belongs there, too.

It's not suitable for reading in bed, because you'll never fall asleep; the conclusion of each item is too stimulating for that. It's not really suitable for extended reading in the evening, either, because you constantly are switching from one topic to another. It might be suitable for reading in waiting rooms, however, and that's where I read my copy, because I'm afraid my Kindle might not fare well if it gets wet.

It's a nice book, entertaining, and although it's formulaic, it's well written. A number of the topics were already known to me, yet the presentation made the topics well worth reading, anyway. Jeff Goldblum might disapprove of this book - but I liked it.

Everyone needs to peek in Einstein's Refrigerator. It is frivolous, fantastic, freaky and fun. The short accounts of bizarre but true tales are educational and entertaining. From stories so gross that you can't help gagging - to tales so silly that you will laugh aloud - people will want to know what you are reading. AND YOU will WANT to tell them! These weird details are too crazy to keep to yourself!
There are so many fun facts that are just too peculiar to be true and absolutely amazing that they are! It is easy to become addicted! It is a fabulous collection of absolutely nothing yet it is all superfluously important! You never know what you will find in Einstein's Refrigerator!