Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, October 22, 2000
This book proves the adage that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Many allegedly "screwed-up facts" are simply cute, too-clever-by half twists that the author has cooked up on familiar subjects, and many of these twists are just as screwed up as the facts that the author is allegedly debunking. For example, on page 2, the book asserts that "there are only forty-six states in the United States. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Massachusetts are commonwealths." Well, okay, those four states do call themselves commonwealths, but doing so obviously does not deprive them of statehood. (A "commonwealth" was simply a term popular in the eighteenth century, particularly around the time of American independence, for describing a political community whose form of government was based on the consent of the governed.) The book contains dozens, if not hundreds, of instances of equally threadbare research and thinking. The author offers no credentials, other than thanking a list of "Mensans" in his acknowledgments; and the book nowhere contains any citation, documentation, or other authority for its "facts," other than a barely page-long introduction in which the author writes that he relied on "encyclopedias, standard references, and specialists." The book's "facts" may supply fodder for some meagerly amusing cocktail-party conversation, but just don't start that conversation in a contentious crowd, because nobody will take your argument seriously if this book is all that is backing you up.
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72 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a fun but disappointing book, September 26, 1999
By A Customer
I don't think this is a book of facts somebody screwed up. A lot of the facts are just common beliefs which, taken completely literally, aren't correct, which shouldn't be a big surprise. (Like, "doughnuts do not have holes.") Much of it is filled with interesting facts. But I was still disappointed, since a lot of the facts I knew already, and the author doesn't provide a lot of information about each fact. Still, it's a fun book, although irritating at times.. I was hoping for something with a little more weight.
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13 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dumb Stuff., July 2, 2002
By A Customer
This book is a very poor piece of literature. A lot of the facts that the author says are false are true, and the author is wrong saying that they are false. There are many inaccuracies. Some of these are very much proven facts that the author claims are wrong. I believe it just the author giving his opinion on the things from what he believes to be true. Some of them on the other hand are false.
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