Customer Reviews

The Final Four of Everything

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a big fan of March Madness but these guys really take the whole world of bracketology to another level with a great sense of humor and a lot of intelligence. They've hired some A-list names to create brackets about First Ladies, Sexually Inadequate Nicknames (!), Movie Gunfights (and American Guns), Magic Tricks, Dallas Cowboys (and screen cowboys), girl singers and regional soda pop. They've got great sportswriters, like George Vecsey and Dan Shaughnessy; a couple of Pulitzer Prize winners, David Maraniss (who wrote that great Vince Lombardi biography) and David Oshinsky; Kurt Andersen, Gail Collins, Stephen Hunter, Tom Chiarella, Richard Corliss, Stefan Fatsis, Franklin Foer and Bill Geist (they've even got his son, Willie doing celebrity mugshots!). It's a great book to share with your friends--and you can create your own brackets, or play with the ones these guys created, on their web site, bracketsmackdown.com.

I opened the book at random, stumbled upon the "Talk Show Graveyard" bracket, and, to my great delight was confronted with a photograph of Dr. Laura Schlessinger as the Queen of the Damned TV hosts. Whether presented as an aperitif or digestif, "The Final Four of Everything" is the perfect accompaniment to a gathering of your favorite eggheads and bigmouths. Keep it at the ready on the buffet and you'll never be at a loss for conversation. (Note to David Edelstein: How could you not rank Sofia Coppola's demise in Godfather III No. 1 in "Cathartic Movie Deaths"? Audiences were positively cleansed!)

Reading over the brackets in this book, one is likely to disagree. At times, one will likely find significant disagreement. However each page/backet is the opinion of one person, not an end-all final answer. Keeping this in mind, "The Final Four of Everything" is a fun book whether as a coffee table book or even toilet reading.

Readers need not be discouraged if they have no interest in certain brackets. Foe example, the brackets on guns or Clint Eastwood films are almost as irrelevant to me as air conditioning in winter. And even if the bracket on micro-brews was horribly flawed, I still enjoyed it. Oddly, team mascots and breakfast cereals were perhaps the most entertaining brackets.

Bracket sections include Americana, History and Politics, People, Sports, Pop Culture, Nature, Words, and Food & Drink. Even if a reader is not interested in some of the topics, there is something for everybody.

If you've ever wanted to know which celebrity's untimely death was the most...untimely, or which roller coaster is the best in the world, or which sitcom dad was the most fatherly, then The Final Four of Everything is where to go to find the answers.


Tons of topics are laid out in bracket form, organized into categories such as Americana, history and politics, people, sports, pop culture, nature, words, and food and drink. Covered in those categories are a wide variety of showdowns, including but limited to:


State Birds
First Ladies
Supermodels
Celebrity Mugshots
Baseball Moments
Gangster Films
Literary Heroes
National Parks
Yogi Berra Wisdom
Breakfast Cereals


The brackets are interspersed with comments and put together by experts in the topic. This a great coffee table book or just something to kill time and argue over. There's even a blank bracket at the end to make your own Final Four of whatever you choose.

This book was a fun party book during March Madness parties! There are lots of topics to argue about and laugh about. You can even create your own bracket in the back of the book.

The Final Four of Everything is a book that surprised me. My boyfriend had bought it for himself at our local Barnes&Noble and I really didn't think we would receive any joint enjoyment from it. I was wrong. The writers introduce you to what they call "Bracketology" -- their scientific method to break down any subject into the best possible solutions that define that subject. Some of the topics include "Best celebrity mugshots", "Classic Bar Drink", and "Best Disney animated film". Although the author's break it down (complete with their arguments on why one solution beats out another) you are free - and encouraged - to do the break down with someone else before you read their answers. I'll admit that even my own explanation makes it sound really nerdy, but for someone that doesn't enjoy long road trips and loves to laugh, this book is a hit!

This was a graduation gift to a young man who loves sports. I thought he would enjoy this since he has been in wrestling and they post brackets everywhere. He really seems to like it and took it off to college with him. I would recommend it too..

Bring this out during a small party and you will get the conversation started for sure! Contains info from many generations so no one will feel left out. Makes a great gift for the person that is hard to shop for!

This is a wonderful book...great fun to read, lots of fascinating brackets by a wide range of interesting people who really know their stuff...endlessly entertaining.

The high school grad I gave this to said it was the first book he read since grade school that he enjoyed.