Customer Reviews

The People's Almanac #2: A Completely New Book from Cover to Cover

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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If I were shipwrecked on an island this is THE book I would want to have with me...kill your TV and get a copy of this book!

I've used this book so much over the years I wore it out. It makes for great conversation at parties etc. It has become a classic!

Unbelievable in the amount of information presented, it's been on my bedside table for just over 10 years now and I still have not come across every page. It is not just a type of encyclopedia, rather it comes across as a sort of dictionary about certain aspects of history that is actually fun to read. And that is in part of what I must stress to the future reader; it is immense, and enjoyable reading.

I have had this book for many years and still love to pick it up every once in a while and go through it. It has great bits and pieces of history that is fascinating, funny and informative. I still recollect facts that I'd learned from the book years later and surprise people with bits of history that they never knew.

This book is a treasure for the predictions alone and they lead off the book in chapter one "the other side of the looking glass: predictions of present-day psychics". It also has predictions by psychics of the past and modern day scientists. Notables include the Berkeley Psychic Institute, Nostradamus, Leo Tolstoi, Daniel Bell-Sociology prof at harvard, Arthur C. Clarke, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford who wrote the population bomb, Orville Freeman- former secty of Agriculture, Herman Kahn- the 300 pound economist, Margaret Mead, McGeorge Bundy, and Roger Revelle: Dean of research at the Univ. of Calif. and Al Gore's original mentor on the environment. The rest of the book is chock full of interesting tidbits. The self-purported difference between this Almanac and others is that this one avers that it gives you facts with truth and honesty. That is to say it avoids special-interest propaganda and government double-talk. The authors present it as a reference book that tries to be entertaining while giving the reader in-depth material on selected topics rather than endless, dry, bare-bones dates and figures on all subjects. Buy it and be the judge. This is a collector's item for all aging hippies from the Age of Acquarius

One of the interesting aspects is this book is the number of informative maps that it includes. Of particular interest to me are its maps of 1914 Europe and Africa, as well as a map of lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean that was made by Christopher Columbus' brother Bartholomew in the early 1500's. There is also a section that briefly describes a number of obscure languages, including Icelandic, Frisian, and the Native American Indian language Cree.

I should observe, however, that the authors seem to have a problem in transliterating at least of these languages: Icelandic. In the transcription of an Icelandic poem the authors make the mistake of representing the Iceland letter "thorn" as "P". I recognize that thorn does, in fact, look very much like "P"--but it is pronounced like the English "th". Therefore, in order to make their description of Icelandic accessible to English speakers having no previous acquaintance with Icelandic, they would have done well to transcribe "thorn" as "th" and not "P"!

As ordered says a lot these days. We are so often disappointed not only with on-line purchases, but purchases in general. Not so with this seller, the item was here before the date given and was precisely as advertised. I couldn't be more pleased. I am also glad to have all three People's Almanacs once again. They are informative, never dry and a joy for any trivia lover!

This second edition by authors David Wallechinsky and David Wallace is nearly as good as the first. There's much easy-to-read information on the world, trivia, politics, sports, history, celebrities, crime and crime solvers, etc. You can read this nicely formatted book in a few days if you want, but most people pick it up for just a few minutes and read a couple interesting facts or true stories. Either way you'll learn more about the USA and the world. This book has over 1400 pages of interesting information - read a few minutes each day and learn something new.