The Book of General Ignorance (A Quite Interesting Book) - Hardcover

John Lloyd; John Mitchinson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571233686 ISBN 13: 9780571233687

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2006

Synopsis

How much do we really know about anything? It’s a question which has obsessed philosophers, scientists, and men in pubs for most of human history. Thomas Edison thought we knew less than one millionth of one percent about anything; Mark Twain thought it would take eight million years to master mathematics alone; Ambrose Bierce believed knowledge was just the small bit of ignorance we arrange and classify. So, we don’t know that much. But, as someone else once said, it isn’t what you don’t know that does you harm, it’s what you know that’s wrong. Enter The Book of General Ignorance, a book that sets out, calmly and humbly, to show you that a lot of what you think you know is wrong, incorrect, piffle, nonsense. If, like Alan Davies, you still think the Henry VIII had six wives, the earth has only one moon, that George Washington was the first president of the USA, that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand, that the largest living thing is a blue whale, that Alexander Graeme Bell invented the telephone, that whisky and bagpipes come from Scotland or that Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain, then there are at least 200 reasons why this is the book for you.

About this title

Review:

"This UK bestseller redefines `common knowledge' with factoids that will inform and entertain (or at least liven up your next cocktail party)." -- OK! Magazine

"This book would make even Edison feel small and silly, for it offers answers to questions you never thought to ask or had no need of asking as you already knew, or thought you knew, the answer." -- The Economist

"To impress friends with your cleverness, beg, borrow or buy John Lloyd and John Mitchinson's The Book of General Ignorance, an extraordinary collection of 230 common misperceptions compiled for the BBC panel game QI (Quite Interesting)." -- Financial Times

"Trivia buffs and know-it-alls alike will exult to find so much repeatable wisdom gathered in one place." -- The New York Times

"Eye-watering, eyebrow-raising, terrific . . . moving slightly faster than your brain does, so that you haven't quite absorbed the full import of one blissful item of trivial information before two or three more come along. Such fine and creative research genuinely deserves to be captured in print." -- Daily Mail

From the Author:

It's got a foreword by Stephen Fry and four words by Alan
Davies.

The rest of it is by the people behind QI (BBC2 10pm Fridays).

They are John Lloyd (former producer of Not the Nine O'Clock News,
Blackadder & Spitting Image), John Mitchinson (former publisher of fat
reference books) and their crack research team: an
astrophysicist-turned-zookeeper, an archaeologist specialising in the 9th
century, a stand-up comic who speaks Mandarin Chinese, a lapsed communist
who writes for the Fortean Times and a pub accountant from Bolton.

If you've never watched QI, you will be astonished at how many things you
don't know, from the very large and strange to the very small and familiar
-
galaxies and subatomic particles, killer marmots, black carrots,
colour-blind bulls and loofahs that grow on trees.

This is the world they don't teach you about at school. The real world:
where panthers aren't black, James Bond drinks whisky, America was
discovered by the Welsh, champagne was invented by the English, Santa Claus

is Turkish and there were 14 sheep on Noah's Ark.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0571233686
• ISBN 13: 9780571233687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304