Customer Reviews

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge: The Book of Mnemonic Devices

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I have spent hours meandering through this maze of mnemonic devices, and yet I find a new and clever one each time I look. There is something for everyone to enable us to remember things we never thought we would.

The section on Spanish verbs will surely come in handy. I particularly like the mathematical and technical sections. After Dr. Evans's book, how can one remain content recalling the speed of light so imprecisely as 300 megameters per second?!

I consume with relish every one of this prolific author's books that I can get my hands on, and I encourage others to do the same. This book contains gems for persons of every age group, occupation, and avocation.

Most people are probably familiar with the famous mnemonic for the musical scale that gives this splendid book its title, but even the most seasoned aficiando of memory devices will find something surprising in this treasure trove of mnemonics. Students from kindergarten to law or medical school will find it useful -- not only for the memory devices it contains but also for the way it inspires readers to invent their own mnemonics. As a professor of legal and constitutional history, I especially like the mnemonics for learning the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution as well as others for important facts in American and British history. An additional nice feature of the book is the spelling section, which has excellent mnemonic devices for about 1,000 words. That section alone is worth the price of the book.

What a great book! Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (The Book of Mnemonic Devices) will come in very handy in my 7th grade classroom. I always try to find new ways to help my students with their study skills - this book will be tremendously helpful with that task. I especially find the Spelling section to be an excellent array of mnemonics to assist them with the difficult task of remembering how to correctly spell the most common misspelled words - myself included. Thank You Dr. Evans!

Dawn L. Clark
Midlothian, VA

What I truly love about this book is the comprehensiveness. It covers more than two dozen subjects, including large sections on math and spelling. The spelling section contains about 1000 mnemonics for the 1000 most frequently misspelled English words(200 more mnemonics than the classic book "Demonic Mnemonic"- which is also excellent).
From a teacher's standpoint, the math, history, geography, and spelling sections will be of great value for any student. What is more, some of the material is sophisticated enough for the Miller Analogies Test (MAT), a graduate admission test of vocabulary and cultural literacy.
It was amazing how quickly I warmed up to this book, and I am not surprised that it's been endorsed by not only two Scrabble champs, but also Brad Rutter (the guy who beat Ken Jennings and everybody else in Jeopardy's Ultimate Tournament of Champions).
Heaps of praise go to Rod Evans, and because the book is both entertaining and inexpensive, I see it making a great gift book as well.

This compact book is extraordinary in its depth and breadth. For someone like me who suffers from a notoriously confused memory this is a fantastically useful volume. Mr. Evans seems to cover everything anyone in any field might want to remember easily. The book contains not only dozens of mnemonics for history, math, geography and other arts and sciences, but also mnemonics for about 1000 frequently misspelled words as well as more obscure interests like Morse code, hunting, boating and birthstones. I also see this book as a fun family learning tool. A clever person might even devise an informative family game around this book possibly similar to Boulderdash. I for one will be keeping this book handy.

Memory is a fickle friend for me -- a vital piece of info often seems just beyond timely recall. Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is a great antidote for that lost, wandering, out-of-control queasiness that so often visits in those moments of weak memory.

The mnemonics catalogued here are encyclopedic - a great start on specific things to remember, in a long list of 45 useful categories from astronomy to zoology. For me the most useful categories are cooking, geopolitics, math, music, religion, and time & calendars (I'm constantly using "thirty days hath September, April, June & November...). Though I won't be using the psychology aids much, they sure offer an interesting, concise glimpse into human behavior and some of its disorders!

But just as important as the catalog is the broad view of how to remember things. With the perspective from this book on the many types of mnemonic (memory-aiding) tools available, I can construct my own mnemonics for the things I will learn tomorrow, or that are discovered or invented next month. Highly recommended.

This book is by far the most comprehensive collection of mnemonic devices I've ever seen. I regularly use the spelling section and find the geography, history, and math sections quite useful. The great thing about this book is that it will be useful from first grade through grad school. Finally, the bibligraphy and the list of online sources will be useful to both teachers and students.

This entertaining and highly useful book should be in every school's professional library. When it comes to committing large chunks of information to memory, mnemonics can be powerful tools. As the user recalls the associations with higher frequency, mnemonics can help commit the information to long-term memory.
While not all of the information may be of relevance for the reader's needs, the mnemonics themselves can inspire the reader to create their own. This book has already been of interest to several faculty members at my school.

When I started browsing through "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge", my first thought was "Why, oh why, didn't I have a book like this 40 years ago when I was in school?" But I shortly realized this book is more than just a study aid featuring mnemonic devices. It's an absolutely marvelous collection of the trivial, e.g., birthplace of Casey Stengel, the esoteric, e.g., formation of Latin verbs, and the consequential, e.g., Amendments to the Constitution. And so many of these entries brought back a flood of memories, some delightful and some not quite so delightful (high school - ugh!). The bottom line is that this is a book everyone should own, whether you're a student preparing for a standardized test (PSAT, SAT, GMAT, LSAT, etc.) or a senior citizen looking for ways to facilitate the recall of decades of accumulated knowledge.

Professor Evans delights the mind by presenting easily grasped nuggets containing a wide array of information. You can meet or reacquaint yourself w/ROY G BIV (p. 134), find out why Hbones equals 6 (p. 111), and even learn how to spell difficult, yet commonplace, words. I really enjoyed the author's introduction, which touched on both Greek mythology and learning methodology with equal clarity. The bottom line: This book exercises the mind's ability to grasp the nearly infinite array of things to know -- and is therefore a valuable tool for any reader. I highly recommend EGBDF, The Book of Mnemonic Devices.