Customer Reviews

Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison: And Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Nature (Outside Books)

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This book answers those weird or stupid questions you might have about the world. Questions such as: "Do scarecrows really work?" or "Why are polar bears so mean?" and "Can bees really detect fear in humans?" This is a great book that I definitely recommend, especially for people with too many questions.

This is one of those books that you read in one page sections. It is basically a collection of interesting questions that the author has answered while working for a magazine. The questions are fun and he gives pretty complete answers. The answers are usually about a page in length so if you want to read something for five minutes this book is perfect. The information is cool, I really enjoyed it. It gives you a lot of responces to questions you often hear.

Remember when you were a child filled with curiousity and wonder about nature? You asked many questions such as why do ducks float, do people go crazy during the full moon and why does do collect in the morning? All of those were great questions and some of them may or may not have been answered to your satisfaction. Now your children are asking the same questions and what are you going to say?

Never fear, dear friends. Outside Magazine's "The Wild File" has provided us with a book answering those various hard questions that we have about nature. Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison is a compendium of the best of The Wild File column. You are presented with five files dealing with various forms of nature. Each file has a question/answer format and cites the person who asked the question.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Some of the questions sounded stupid but in reality made sense. The answers were informative and hilarious. You would be surprised over the number of experts in such esoteric fields of wildlife. For example, one informant researched the number of pushups that lizards do in their exercise regimine. Yes, there are people who really do that.
What is also great about this book is its brevity and accessibility. You can share it with your children as they ask you the great questions of nature. You can spend time finding those answers to questions you had as a child. This is a delighful read. So go out and find out why lizards do pushups and why llamas spit.

This book is great. It's fun to read, I read it in about 24 hours but I did nothing else till I finished. It is presented in a question and answer format and is well indexed so it's easy to look up your topic. The explanations are well written, the science is strong, and the language makes it easy to understand even when the subject is complex. When school starts this book will be on my desk for all those strange questions my students ask.

217 pages of funny answers to weird questions asked about the world, nature and, in general, the universe around us. Like, how many times can a stone skip on water? Is Pluto really a planet? What is foxfire? How do ducks float? Where does the white go when the snow melts? Are blue moons really blue? Why do worms always show up after the rain?
The book comes with an index, so you can look up facts fast, and the intro comes with an e-mail address because 'The Wild File' which the book is based on still lives on the pages of 'Outside' magazine and they still need questions!
Easy to read, funny and with answers anybody can understand. I would suggest this book for anybody, young or old.

Everything you never wanted to know! Perfect book for that know-it-all in your life. We all have one!

"Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison And Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Nature" is filled with all the stupid, ridiculous, silly, or `obvious' questions we're too afraid to ask, or feel we should already know the answers to. Best of all, the folks at Outside Magazine tracked down the most obscure of experts to get the answers.

So if you've ever wanted to know precisely why a tongue will stick to cold metal (and what to do about it if it should happen to you), you can find that out in here. If you want to know how goose down is collected, that's in here too. The book debunks common myths, such as the idea that eagles mate in midair and sometimes fall to the ground and die during the act. It explains the exact science behind that distinctive smell in the air when it rains, and the factors that have created the misconception that tornadoes are somehow attracted to trailer parks. Next time someone gives you guff over your male pattern baldness you can point them to the argument in here for why it's actually a sign of virility and fertility.

The editors turn seemingly dull questions into far more entertaining discourses. For example, the question of how high birds can fly becomes a catalogue of the highest KNOWN flights, most of which had rather... sudden... ends.

If you're the kind of person who hasn't given up their sense of wonder at the universe, this is a great book to have around. It makes a great conversation starter, but it's equally fun to just sit down and read for enjoyment's sake.

this book is really good... i found it informative and interesting... i recomend iut to everyone