1) "The Book of General Ignorance" by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
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.
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.
Revealing the truth behind all the things we think we know but don’t, this book leaves you dumbfounded about all the misinformation you’ve managed to collect during your life, and sets you up to win big should you ever be a contestant on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Besides righting the record on common (but wrong) myths like Captain Cook discovering Australia or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, The Book of General Ignorance also gives us the skinny on silly slipups to trot out at dinner parties (Cinderella wore fur, not glass, slippers and chicken tikka masala was invented in Scotland, not India).
Thomas Edison said that we know less than one millionth of one percent about anything: this book makes us wonder if we know even that much.
2) "Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask A Doctor After You're Third Martini" by Mark Leyner
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . .
•How do people in wheelchairs have sex?
•Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast?
•Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever?
•Why does asparagus make my pee smell?
•Why do old people grow hair on their ears?
•Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true?
. . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you.
3) "Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader" by Bathroom Reader's Institute
The 26th annual edition of Uncle John’s wildly successful series is all-new and jam-packed with the BRI’s patented mix of fun and information. Open up to any page and you may find an interesting origin (like the origin of the snowglobe) or a piece of obscure history (like the true story of the man who tried to repeal the law of gravity). You’ll also find weird news, urban legends, brain teasers, classic riddles, bizarre headlines, and of course, the incredible factoids at the bottom of each page. Here are a few of the perpetually pleasing articles awaiting you:
- The Lamest Excuses of All Time
- How to Survive on…Roadkill
- Astronauts Who Got Kicked Out of Space
- The Woman Who Was Her Own Twin
- Foiled by Technology: Dumb Crooks Edition
- The History of the Teleprompter, the Police Car, and the Fly Swatter
- “Jogging Makes You Dumber,” and Other Real Study Results
- The Lost Fortune of Abraham Lincoln
- Boxing Lingo
And much, much more!
4) "The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce
If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. There, a bore is “a person who talks when you wish him to listen,” and happiness is “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.” This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.
A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.
This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.
5) "Geek's Guide to World Domination: Be Afraid, Beautiful People" by Garth Surdem
TUNE IN. TURN ON. GEEK OUT.
Sorry, beautiful people. These days, from government to business to technology to Hollywood, geeks rule the world.
Finally, here’s the book no self-respecting geek can live without–a guide jam-packed with 314.1516 short entries both useful and fun. Science, pop-culture trivia, paper airplanes, and pure geekish nostalgia coexist as happily in these pages as they do in their natural habitat of the geek brain.
In short, dear geek, here you’ll find everything you need to achieve nirvana. And here, for you pathetic nongeeks, is the last chance to save yourselves: Love this book, live this book, and you too can join us in the experience of total world domination.
• become a sudoku god
• brew your own beer
• build a laser beam
• classify all living things
• clone your pet
• exorcise demons
• find the world’s best corn mazes
• grasp the theory of relativity
• have sex on Second Life
• injure a fish
• join the Knights Templar
• kick ass with sweet martial-arts moves
• learn ludicrous emoticons
• master the Ocarina of Time
• pimp your cubicle
• program a remote control
• quote He-Man and Che Guevara
• solve fiendish logic puzzles
• touch Carl Sagan
• unmask Linus Torvalds
• visit Beaver Lick, Kentucky
• win bar bets
• write your name in Elvish
Join us or die, you will.
Begun, the Geek Wars have
6) "5 People Who Died During Sex: and 100 Terribly Tasteless Lists" by Karl Shaw
All in perfectly bad taste
Prepare to be amazed, appalled, disgusted, and hugely entertained by this compendium of indelicate oddities. Nothing is too inane, too insane, too bizarre, or too distasteful for this incredible, seemingly impossible, but absolutely true collection of facts from across the ages and around the world.
7) "Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities" by Ian Stewart
Knowing that the most exciting math is not taught in school, Professor Ian Stewart has spent years filling his cabinet with intriguing mathematical games, puzzles, stories, and factoids intended for the adventurous mind. This book reveals the most exhilarating oddities from Professor Stewart’s legendary cabinet.
Inside, you will find hidden gems of logic, geometry, and probability—like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop-up dodecahedron, and the real reason why you can’t divide anything by zero. Scattered among these are keys to Fermat’s last theorem, the Poincaré conjecture, chaos theory, and the P=NP problem (you’ll win a million dollars if you solve it). You never know what enigmas you’ll find in the Stewart cabinet, but they’re sure to be clever, mind-expanding, and delightfully fun.
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