The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong Kindle Edition

Seemed to be a very interesting book. Filled with seldom know facts. Then the authors infuse their Catholic beliefs about Mary being a goddess and hokey myths trying to say the Bible is inaccurate. Throws a shadow of doubt as to the facts of all other chapters.

This is one amazing book. You don't want to put it down. As you read it, you wish there was someone standing nearby so you could share what you just read. I even had to pick up the phone and call my son to relate a section of the book right after reading. Forget what you know or think you know and open your eyes - you will start to question everything you think you know. You think you are well educated until this book throws into question what you know and goes about showing you why you are wrong. Myth buster. Buy it for yourself, buy it for friends, give it as a gift, or share your copy. Worth twice what it costs.

Without a doubt, the preface, the free sample is the best part of this book. It begins with a nice essay on how much we do not know. After that it becomes a children’s trivia book. There is a little chapter on James Bond’s favorite drink. There is a chapter on why the dishwasher was invented. This is the sort of thing a twelve-year-old boy would like. As for myself, I am at 74% mark after a day and half. I am going to finish this just for the mortification of the flesh.

This book should be titled The Book of Fallacies.First of all, the subtitle: "Everything You Think You Know is Wrong" is an absolute claim that is absolutely wrong. Think about that subtitle for a minute.The book has entries that are not fact-based. For example, the entry on page 74 claims that being killed by an asteroid is more likely than than being killed by lightning simply because an asteroid strike is "well overdue."It is estimated that 6,000 or more people are killed by lightning each year worldwide.

Great read. This book is filled to the brim with interesting facts, each of which are self-contained and covered in 1-2 pages, which is the perfect length. It's quick enough to pick up and read for a few minutes at a time, but also long enough to give a fairly good explanation of the facts it's laying out.A lot of the book is spent challenging things most people accept as fact (do goldfish really have a 3 second memory? did Marie Antoinette really say "let them eat cake?" are you sure the Earth only has one moon?), or asking interesting questions with surprising answers (what color is water? what does the moon smell like?). If any of those examples I just listed interested you, then by all means give this book a whirl.

Given as a gift to an avid reader, keeper of facts big or small, obscure or broadly known, and self proclaimed junkie for "nickel knowledge" -the kind of stuff good for dinner parties and wowing grandchildren - who says this book as a gift was great fun and a perfect pick. (Whew!)

The British panel game-show "QI" is, I think, the best show on television, even given the sad fact that it *isn't* on television in the US, and could well be runner-up to the fabled "Mystery Science Theater 3000" for the best show in the history of television. That sets a pretty high standard, therefore, for books associated with the series, and "The Book of General Ignorance" by and large stands up to the pressure.Drawing from the TV program's custom of giving large negative-point penalties to contestants who give answers that "everyone knows" are true but are in fact incorrect, Johns Lloyd and Mitchinson list a bunch of questions that have conventional-wisdom answers (Who invented the theory of relativity? Why is a marathon the distance it is?) or have popular urban legends attached to them (What did Thomas Crapper invent? What man-made objects can be seen from the moon?) and show why "everything you think you know is wrong." Some of their information is debatable (for example, in response to the question "How many states does the USA have?" they answer 46, saying that Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are technically not "states" but commonwealths), but even the most educated reader would probably come away from these pages having learned a few things.More to the point, she'd also come away entertained. While this book doesn't have the outright comedy of the TV show (granted, it's not meant to), the pedigree is still evident, which puts this a step ahead of much of the raft of "interesting stuff you probably never knew" books out there. Combine this with a series of Cecil Adams books, and I bet the connoisseur of obscure knowledge and shooter-down of urban legends will come out very well armed indeed.

Bought it as a white elephant gift for Christmas. It was a hit. Everyone thought it was funny, and the winner of it took time to read some of the stuff outta the book for everyone. Good buy.

I'm not talking about mere typos here, but quite a few places where sentences have just been chopped up and randomly sorted, so one sentence will break off, perhaps mid word, another starts, then three or four lines down you encounter the missing half a sentence !!Not frequent enough to warrant returning, I am still enjoying it (about 1/2 way through, its a book you can dip into and out of without losing the thread,as its arranged as a set of disconnected "factoids") but far too many errors to be passed over without comment.For content, I'd have given it 5, but downgraded by 2 stars because of the very very sloppy editing.

Great book and big thanks for the publisher for allowing the Kindle version to be cheaper than the paperback!(not too much to ask, is it?)Personally, I find it insulting when a publisher allows me to waste paper and production line expenses on a cheap version when there's an electronic version, with all the associated economies, available at a MUCH higher price.People will vote with their wallets, and simply not buy the e-books. What they will also not do is buy the papeback, because they want electronic version but it's too expensive.Get real, publishers, please.

As a life-long QI fan, I bought the Kindle version of this book to go on my new toy. The content is generally very good but there are a few typographical errors that make some sections almost impossible to understand. I guess the printed version was scanned in and then had OCR software used to recognise the words - but without the subsequent proof-reading that is normally expected.A bit of a disappointment in that regard.Come on Amazon - if you want to really push the use of Kindles, crack-down on the shoddy way in which books are put together.

Highly entertaining and informative book for any QI fan. After watching QI on tv I bought this book and enjoyed it. Ideal to dip in and out of rather than read cover to cover. It is full of facts you can use to impress friends down the pub.

Love these books, well researched and always entertaining to read for 15 mins or a couple of hours. Keep them coming.