Customer Reviews

Life's Imponderables: The Answers to Civilization's Most Perplexing Questions (Imponderables Books)

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

 

 

I bought this for a 14 year old boy and read much of it before I mailed it to him. The facts are presented in a really fun format. The type of book you can pick up and read for five minutes or an hour. This would be a good book for any parent of a 4 year old to read! It answers lots of questions that we have all asked at one time or another.

This book is full of interesting things to read about, but it suffers from the fact that the answers to the questions are only given a superficial amount of research, or are purely speculation. It is fun to read as long as you don't take the answers too seriously, and is in the same vein as the Urban Legend web sites (such as snopes.com) and newspaper columns (such as Ask Cecil) which delve into obscure trivia on everyday things.

This book is purely entertainment, and shouldn't be considered the definitive answer on anything. Also, much of the material is taken from talk shows and reader letters, so reading this book is a lot like being in a chat room or BBS and listening to armchair philosophers expounding their theories.

In all, if you want urban legends, you can use the Internet for that, and the web will be more up-to-date than what's contained in this book, but if you want entertainment, this book isn't half bad.

I've purchased books like this in the past and they give origins of words and technical terms that I just don't find interesting. This book, however, was not like that at all! It is intellegently written but easy to understand and relate to. It actually answers the questions and has humourous overtones. There are also fun sections called: Frustables, and Letters.

Buy this book! It's well worth the money....I've already told everyone I know about it.

I loved these books as a kid, so I was happy to see three of them bound into one volume with this selection here. If you're naturally curious about lots of different subjects and wonder about the answers to questions that others could not care less about, then this book is for you. The level of research is sometimes superficial, but I mostly left each question satisfied. You'll also find the text to be a bit dated on certain subjects, but the world changes so fast, what are you going to do?

Overall this is a very good book. Well written, entertaining, and of course full of lots of interesting facts. I found a few of the facts to be very obvious, and others were really boring/pointless, but that was only about 5% of them. Overall it was a good read.

This is a lifes answer to all those stupid questions. Didn't you always want to know how people who run private graveyards make there money or does anyone ACTUALLY buy fruitcake for themselves? Well this will tell you. I have 2 words for you-READ IT! :)