After reading this " Book of General Ignorance" both my husband & I agreed upon one subject: there is much ignorance among the population. It seems that the "spin doctors" of history have invaded the "mind of the Populace" with these intriguing little tales and thus creating a mindset of cute little antedotes about subjects that are simply not fact; but Fiction. Nevertheless they have invaded our "brains" with useless information which is just that - "Useless Information"

I like QI. But another reviewer mentioned that the book is not so much odd facts, as it is technicalities. That's true for just about every question.

Still it was enjoyable, informative, and fun to frustrate my friends with.

This is a cool skip around book. My husband and I are both "skipping around" in it. It's neat that we've both read different parts and we always end up telling each other interesting things we've learned as they come up (or not) in conversation. (We keep it in the bathroom) We've even broke it out at parties and everyone can't help but to turn it into a trivia game. Which in turn makes for a great drunken theological/philosophical group discussion. It's just fun. We love it. It does have a couple entries that might greatly surprise the Bible thumper. It did me.

It's easy, easy to recommend this book to my friends. All I have to do is read them, or have them read, the short and "INTERESTING" preface. That in itself is an excellent hook. I can't think of anyone that would not love this book.

A well written, fun little book of trivia that is rather more uplifting than you might think. I couldn't get enough of this book and found it to have a charming style of prose.

My only complaint is that some of the information did not seem to be as well researched as it should have been (especially when the aim of the book seems to be to point out the mistakes others have made in the same field.) For instance, it is stated in the book that the reason the 1971 film adaptation of "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" was changed to "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate factory," was because at that time in the United States, "Charlie" was derogative slang for an African-American. Sorry, no. The term "Charlie" was in common usage by that time to refer to Asian-Americans, or rather more specifically, Vietnamese.

I suppose that my complaints could be cleaned up with another round of editing, but perhaps a book of facts should be a bit more precise in the first place.

Most people like to be well informed, and are often pleasantly surprised when being corrected on a common misconception. And so the cover of "the Book of General Ignorance" sets up its premise: "Everything you think you know is wrong." And the image of a boy in a dunce cap visually communicates how "ignorant" we all truly are, for believing that Mt. Everest is the world's tallest mountain, or thinking that Henry VIII had six wives.

Great, let's open the book and have some fun while being enlightened to the true facts.

The trouble is, it soon becomes apparent (at least it did for me) that "The Book of General Ignorance" is going to "set us straight" mainly by resorting to trick questions, games with semantics and phrasing, undocumented conjecture, unproved theories, personal opinions and downright contradictions.

Hence, a volcano measured from its base in the depths of the ocean becomes the tallest mountain, Anarctica can be both the driest and wettest place on Earth, Henry VIII only had two wives by strict Roman Catholic theological interpretation, or the most common material in the world is something never seen nor even proven to exist!

A perfect example of opinion or conjecture being passed off as fact is the question of how many wise men visited Jesus. Because of tradition, people generally assume three, even though the Biblical accounts mention no specific number. Yet, somehow, "The Book of General Ignorance" can correctly inform us that the number is between two and twenty. One may well ask, If the Bible is obscure on this point, then how is this figure arrived at? The inarguable answer: because - "most scholars agree!"

Others have mentioned this book being humorous, but that is an example of where the true humor and entertainment value of this book lies.

Another example of this silly approach to factual information is in the answer to "How man moons does the Earth have?" We are told, "At least seven." The chapter then begins to identify six asteroid-like objects that don't even have a regular orbit and that it even admits most astronomers refuse to identify as moons. All I can say is, be careful with how much money you put down at the local pub if you hope to trap the lads with this trick question. But to make matters worse, as it begins listing these nebulous hunks of matter, the book states "six more have been identified..." and then proceeds to list only five!

The obvious observation is, if you are going to accuse others of being dunces, better be careful about the ignorance you yourself may be displaying.

But the greatest flaw of this book is that too much of it deviates from the advertised premise, that common knowledge is often wrong. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that subject matter like how many crocuses it takes to make a kilo of saffron or what were the original color of the Oompah-Loompahs belongs more in a collection of obscure, bizarre trivia than a book about common misconceptions.

It doesn't help either that these British authors, even in a book like this which is suppose to be fun, and one you would just take for granted to be religiously or politically neutral, can't help but get not-so-subtle digs in at Christians, Americans and conservatives in non-sequitur fashion.