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

~ John Leonard (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...this is_the largest, most up-to-date and affordable one volume desk reference available today...an_absolute_must for every home, dorm_room and_library." -- Tucson Citizen

"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

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1104 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (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: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #135,317 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 163 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 (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

91 of 95 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 "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great organization, March 15, 2006

By	Tsktsk "Tsk" (Florida) - See all my reviews

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.