Customer Reviews

Glad You Asked: Intriguing Names, Facts, and Ideas for the Curious-Minded

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I was a little disapointed in this book. I expected random interested facts written in the style of Michael. Instead, it is a alphabetical list of random items from the Encyclopedia Brittanica with only snippets of Michael's insight. Still read it though. It was better than a sleeping pill. 2 pages and I would be out like a light.

I thought this book would be interesting to find little known facts and become updated on subjects already known. Michael Feldman introduces each section and provides humorous anecdotal remarks, but from the start gets it wrong. He introduces the book and praises Encyclopedia Britannica on massing great information, but on page xii he errs with "...bezoars,fossilized stones of animal dung, were once widely praised and prized as magical cure-alls...".

A bezoar is ingested foreign matter that does not pass though the intestines. The word he was looking for is coprolite, fossilized dung. I bring this up because if the introduction isn't correct, how can we believe the rest of the book? The editors of the encyclopedia should have proofed it.