Customer Reviews

Top 10 of Everything 2008 (Top Ten of Everything)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
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The Top Ten of Everything is released in different markets as specific country editions such as Australian Edition (for Australasian region). So if you're not American you may be better off purchasing this elsewhere since although Amazon is a global seller and website the Amazon warehouse is in the USA so you'll probably get the US version. The advantage of buying the region specific version most appropriate to you is that your country/ies is/are included at the bottom of the country ranked lists in italics if they didn't make the top ten list. So you actually can learn what your country's population, unemployment rate and the hundred of other facts are as well as just find out who the top ten are. The other major advantage is that the metric system (so you have some idea how high, much things weigh etc) is used and prices quoted in lists are in your own currency so you can relate better to the lists.

The top ten of everything is a sensational collection of facts on the top ten of lots of topics from top selling music artists to tallest buildings. Sport results, movie takings, deaths by various animals, guns, crime and everything else are inside. Highest mountain, longest border, population and other demographic info is also ranked. This book is full of colour photographs and illustrations as well. It does come out before the year mentioned (ie this 2008 edition was published in 2007 (I am writing this review in November 2007), so obviously the book is not entirely up to date for the year on the title. It is still great though and an excellent source of trivia questions or answers to friendly bets. I have previously owned (and reviewed) the 2005 edition and a lot of the lists especially historical ones are still the same so depending on the lists or trivia you're interested in you may be better off buying a much cheaper previous year volume. If the latest stats such as highest grossing movie, latest sporting stats and so forth are important to you then you may want to fork out the extra for the current one.

If you're a teacher, trivia night fundraiser question writer, interested in history or just plain interested in what is the highest, longest, top selling, top performing, oldest, largest capacity and a heap of other achievements of a number of different topics from nature (eg deadliest animal to humans), man made structures (eg highest buildings), sport (eg most wins) economic (eg most expensive countries to buy a Big Mac), poverty (eg highest unemployment rates), agriculture (eg top ten list of various crop producing countries), natural resources (eg top ten list of various mineral producing and also consuming countries), disasters (eg worst passenger deaths from ferries), largest ports, oldest subways, busiest airports, these lists and more covering a vast range of interesting topics mean this is the book for you!

This is a fun book. We used it for an evening of fun family entertainment and it kept us guessing and laughing for a couple of hours. However, it is rather easy to get through and I guess if you buy this book annually it would become rather repetative. But Mr. Ash has a lot of interesting and surprising catagories and it does provide an interesting look at many different subjects.

I got this book for a grandchild who loves facts and figures and history and seem to remember ALL this trivia. He loves it as well as several other grandchildren. Great book. Good price.

We use this book when we have family over for dinner. It engages everyone.
I ask the ? and then each person that wants to participate answers. The rule is that each person responds and then the correct answer is given.


If you choose to follow this format, it allows each person, no matter what age or intelligence, to give their response. Then when the caller gives the correct answer people immediately reflect on their own response first; then they think about whether they were correct. Believe it or not all this happens quickly (in my experience). There is not usually a focus on who was right or wrong. It may take some time to get participants used to the idea of going around the table before hearing whether their answer was correct.

Children, probably, benefit from this approach the most, however; this approach allows everyone to save face.

mcmg

It's a good book, I was sorry to see that Carlos Slim wasn't acknowledged as the world's richest man.