The Book of General Ignorance - Hardcover

Mitchinson, John; Lloyd, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307394913 ISBN 13: 9780307394910

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007

Synopsis

Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller.

Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty "gotcha" compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It'll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.

Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You'll be surprised at how much you don't know! Check out THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE for more fun entries and complete answers to the following:

How long can a chicken live without its head?
About two years.

What do chameleons do?
They don't change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states.

How many legs does a centipede have?
Not a hundred.

How many toes has a two-toed sloth?
It's either six or eight.

Who was the first American president?
Peyton Randolph.

What were George Washington's false teeth made from?
Mostly hippopotamus.

What was James Bond's favorite drink?
Not the vodka martini.

About this title

Review

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

"The Book of General Ignorance won't make you feel dumb. It's really a call to be more curious."
--The Associated Press

"Ignorance may be bliss, but so is learning surprising information."
--Hartford Courant

"You, too, can banish social awdwardness by having its endless count of facts and factoids at the ready. Or you could just read it and keep what you learned to yourself. Betcha can't."
--New York Daily News

"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

"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

"Trivia books, like any kind of mental or physical addiction, are both irresistible and unsatisfying. By the standards of the genre, this one has something approaching the force of revelation. Answering silly questions suddenly seems less important than taking the trouble to ask a few."
--Melbourne Age

"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

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

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: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0307394913
• ISBN 13: 9780307394910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288