Customer Reviews

The Order of Things: How Everything in the World Is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders; Revised Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked this book up after seeing it mentioned in David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day" - he had referred to it as an excellent source for verifying just about any fact or figure you can think of, and he was right. The Internet can answer just about any nagging reference question you may have, but here you will have it in a handy volume you can also pour over just for fun. Excellent for settling debates with know-it-alls and Cliff Clavens everywhere.

OK, I admit it, I'm a reference book geek. I love to have as much information crammed into the smallest space possible. The Order of Things does just that, and it does it exponentially well. This is an invaluable reference for anyone who wants to know "How is X related to Y" or "Which of these is better, older, more important..." Any trivia, history, or fact buff would love to find this under their birthday wrapping paper.

The Order of Things answers thousands of trivia questions and provides an excellent summary starting-point for researchers. Learn the Roman Empirical heirarchy, list the moons of Jupiter by size, or follow the pictorial brewing of beer -- then go to the library and get the details.

Readers who use this type of book for the first time have a tendency to focus on those areas that interest them most. I did not resist this tendency. This book of lists is an excellent reference. However, the two areas to which I turned first are ripe for revision. The list of Academy Award categories is incomplete. Although the Scientific and Technical Awards are listed, other awards that are not necessarity given each year are not (e.g., the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award). Also, the so-called Best Actor award is actually for the "Best Performance By an Actor In a Leading Role" according to the rules published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the section on U.S. military ranks, 3-star and 4-star generals and admirals are given the grade "O-8", the same as that for 2-star officers. According to the list of U.S. Army ranks, warrant officers are "commissioned officers." Don't tell this to a warrant officer unless you're looking for a fight. Warran

I've found this book very useful as a reference manual and also enjoyable to read

Pick it up, turn to a random page, read for a while. This is by far my favorite book to thumb through. Useful as a reference book in a few rare situations, but best used as a book left in your book bag to make time fly when commuting, waiting or generally killing time.

It gives you a basic understanding of a variety of subjects in quick, facinating format.

Great way to see the "big picture" without having to do a lot of research!

In theory, this is a terrific idea for a library ready-reference book: pages and pages of lists of every kind and classification of thing you can imagine. The design and execution is a good deal more problematic, however. Some of the selected topics are obvious -- Roman and Japanese emperors, weights and measures, the Ten Commandments, Newton's Laws of Motion -- but many others (I'm tempted to say "most others") are not in any way hierarchical and are seldom naturally structured. In fact, they often seem artificial and arbitrary, meant only to fill up space to produce a book large enough to market. At the least, they strain the rubric. For example: "Circus attractions" is just a incomplete collection of types of acts; "Employee benefits" is merely one sample list; "Motion picture genres" includes an apparently arbitrary forty-one types of films (who says?); likewise the "areas" of the performing arts; likewise the topics in a household budget. And why is the list of topics used in the _Macmillan Visual Dictionary_ a valid universal list? Finally, even some of topics I personally would have considered obvious are omitted, like a list of the traditional logical fallacies. If you remember the Wallaces' highly idiosyncratic and very browsable _Book of Lists_ series from the 1970s, . . . well this is nothing like that. Finally, it pains me to observe that the book's designer saw fit to commit the amateurish font-sin of setting the titles of publications in the blurbs on the back cover in ALL SWASH.

This book is great for students, professors and anyone else who loves knowledge! I found it interesting and useful in all my studies and would recommend it to anyone I know.