Customer Reviews

What If?

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Marshal Brain has created a niche for taking questions that children and adults come up with that go beyond the normal range of books. Here, he contemplates and answers questions ranging from the scientific "What if someone shot a gun off in an airplane?" to the practical "What if I had to file bankruptcy?" to the just plain strange "What if I tied 150 helium balloons to my Jack Russell terrier that weighs only 10 pounds - would she float away in the air?" Urban myths are addressed also; for example looking at what really would be the result of tossing a coin off the Empire State Building. Each question is treated matter of factly and this dry tone makes reading a few pages enjoyable, but you wouldn't really want to sit down and just read cover to cover. I suspect that this book will appear in many bathrooms, where short span reading is valued. Brain notes his favorite questions, as well as perennial favorites at his web site. It sometimes shows that he puts in more love to his favorites but works he works hard on all his questions. Overall, you may walk away having learned something as well as being entertained. Wonderful for curious children of all ages.

My 9 year old loves this book. I love this book. What more can I say?

This book proposes to answers to questions people have always wondered about, such as "What if I threw a penny off the Empire State Building?" And it does so some of that--but at 128 pages the reader is paying $13 for answers to only about 75 questions based on information most could look up themselves online.

Each answer is only a few paragraphs long and often doesn't give you enough of a detailed explanation. Sometimes the authors make things up or guess when they don't know.

And some of the questions are not "intriguing" as claimed in the title but rather are inanely common sense, such as "What if I save a quarter every day of my life?" Huh? Just do the math! Or "What if I looked straight at an eclipse of the sun?" Is this a book for dummys? Much of it is just too obvious.

So it's a mixed bag--a few interesting tidbits that may make it worth picking up the book for a quarter at a garage sale, but certainly not worth the $2 I paid for it at a used book store.

When I first opened it and read it i read alomost the whole thing. It is a very fun read, but dont read it all al once, it makes you get very sick of the book and you wont want to read it again.