The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind [Hardcover]

John Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 7, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0312313675 | ISBN-13: 978-0312313678 | Edition: First Edition

The new standard in reference from the nation's leading newspaper:
A thorough, authoritative, easy-to-use guide offering deeper coverage on a broad range of essential subjects.

Whether you are researching the history of the world, interested in learning more about an obscure medical procedure, exploring environmental trends, studying a great work of literature, looking for tips on how to improve your crossword puzzle skills, or just trying to gain a deeper understanding of the latest current events, this book is for you. An indispensable resource for every home, office, dorm room, and library, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge includes insightful sidebars by Times writers, and covers major categories including art, astronomy, business, sports, history, medicine, philosophy, photography, biology, film, and much more!

Years in the making, this one volume is designed to offer more information than any other book on the most popular subjects as well as providing easy-to-access data vital for everyday living. It is the only comprehensive reference book to include authoritative, engaging in-depth essays from experts in almost every field of endeavor, with innovative cross-referencing to allow for to even greater understanding.

Featuring:
- Biographical dictionary of nearly one thousand of the most important people of every field
- Writers Guide to grammar, usage and style
- The United States Constitution
- The most complete sports section of any one-volume reference book
- A thirty-thousand-word history of the world
- Crossword dictionary

Contributors include:
- Jane Brody on health matters
- Dennis Overbye on the Big Bang
- Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court today
- Andrew Revkin on the state of the world's environment
- John Noble Wilford on the oldest human fossil
- Michael Kimmelman on the origins of photography
- Will Shortz on crosswords
- Natalie Angier on war
- Nicholas Wade on how life began

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I wish I'd had this book 25 years ago. It is certain to become an indispensable tool for fact fanatics." --Bill Bryson, author of A Short History of Nearly Everything

"In short, this is the largest, most up-to-date and affordable one volume desk reference available today and is an absolute must for every home, dorm room and library." -- Tucson Citizen

About the Author

The Staff of The New York Times, introduction by John Leonard

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1104 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312313675
• ISBN-13: 978-0312313678
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #309,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

172 of 175 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Packed with useful info and well written too! December 6, 2004

By Lynn Harnett TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Bluffers beware: owners of this well-written, surprisingly entertaining tome (1096 pages, a bit over 4 pounds) are likely to settle any fact-based argument on the spot. Whether the argument concerns what year K.C. Jones was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, or who the great figures of Iraqi mythology might be, or what famous people originally hailed from New Hampshire, a dip into these pages will prove you right or wrong.

There are three main sections: The Arts; Economics, Business and Finance; and Science and Technology. Each chapter (Dance, Geography, Mathematics, Literature and Drama, Medicine, Sports, etc) starts off with a succinct but comprehensive history. For example, "Architecture" moves from the Paleolithic to Skyscrapers in 11 pages, managing to define Byzantine and list the great works of Frank Lloyd Wright without skipping the Baroque. Each chapter highlights the famous people in its field and concludes with a glossary of terms.

"Times" writers have contributed essays throughout, including Steve Kinzer on Jelly Roll Morton, Jane Brody on Hypertension, and Nicholas Wade on the future of human evolution. The back of the book is a treasure trove of facts: a language usage guide, a crossword puzzle dictionary, vital statistics of the world's nations and the U.S. states, a list of award-winners, a dictionary of food, a wine primer, a guide to nutrition, and a biographical dictionary of 1,000 people. This is one of those books you didn't know you needed till you had it.

96 of 101 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lot of Information, Easy to Finc January 18, 2005

By John Matlock

Format:Hardcover

A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind -- General, Reference, Trivia, Reference / General ==I started off with this book by having a question: What is the capital of Uruguay. ==After all, a Guide to Essential Knowledge should contain such facts. Further they should be easy to find (well indexed), the page referenced should be easy to find, and the information on the page should be easy to distinguish from the rest of the page. ==Well I turned to the index, yup, there was Uruguay - page 857. 'Turned to page 857, this was in the section Nations of the World, Uruguay was in bold face type and underlined in the middle of the left hand column. A couple of inches from the top of the Uruguay entry it said, Capital: Montevideo. The book certainly passed the first test. ==Then I started flipping through the book. I found the Hundred Words Most Frequently Misspelled - I won't bother to mention how many of these I frequently mizzpel. ==As with any of these omnibus type books, the selection of what material to include is always a problem. You can't put in everything and still be able to lift it. So far, everything I've looked for I've found, what more can I add.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great organization March 15, 2006

By Tsktsk

Format:Hardcover

For those who said this book doesn't have anything you couldn't find in your local library. Well, duh. This book doesn't have anything you couldn't find in the library, or faster yet, online. The entire point is the organization, having everything at hand in a concise manner. You'd have to do some searching and clicking to get all the information about one subject that this book stuffs into a few pages, and you wouldn't get them in concise, logical order without repetition. Obviously, this book doesn't go ultra in depth or cover every subject area. Even whole encyclopedia sets can't do that. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is it tells you what you need to know. If you want to be fairly knowledgeable in any given subject really quickly, its useful to not have to read a lot of books/internet sources and then figure out what part of the information you can/should retain.