Reference Books - Page 3

Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty

Joy Masoff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kids love stuff that's gross. From the liquids, solids, and gases--especially the gases!--or their own bodies to the creepy, crawly, slimy, slithery, fetid, and feculent phenomena in the world at large, kids with a curious bent just can't get enough. Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty brings together, in one book, all the good things about some of the baddest things on Earth.

Exhaustively researched and impeccably scientific, yet written with a lively lack of earnestness, Oh, Yuck! is an ants to zits encyclopedic compendium covering people, animals, insects, plants, foods, and more. Here are vampire bats, which sip blood and pee at the same time so that they'll always be light enough to fly away; and slime eels, wreathed in mucus and eating fellow fish from the inside out. Oh, Yuck! explains why vomit smells; where dandruff comes from; what pus is all about; and why maggots adore rotting meat. Other features include gross recipes, putrid projects, 10 foods that make you airborne, and more.

With hundreds of cartoon illustrations and real-life photographs, Oh, Yuck! is the complete guide to the irresistible--at least to an 8-to-12 year old--underbelly of life.

The Book of General Ignorance

John Mitchinson, John Lloyd

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

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.

Who invented champagne?
Not the French.

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

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

How many penises does a European earwig have?
a)Fourteen
b)None at all
c)Two (one for special occasions)
d)Mind your own business

Which animals are the best-endowed of all?
Barnacles. These unassuming modest beasts have the longest penis relative to their size of any creature. They can be seven times longer than their body.

What is a rhino’s horn made from?
A rhinoceros horn is not, as some people think, made out of hair.

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.

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English

Henry Hitchings

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Words are essential to our everyday lives. An average person spends his or her day enveloped in conversations, e-mails, phone calls, text messages, directions, headlines, and more. But how often do we stop to think about the origins of the words we use? Have you ever thought about which words in English have been borrowed from Arabic, Dutch, or Portuguese? Try admiral, landscape, and marmalade, just for starters.

 

The Secret Life of Words is a wide-ranging account not only of the history of English language and vocabulary, but also of how words witness history, reflect social change, and remind us of our past. Henry Hitchings delves into the insatiable, ever-changing English language and reveals how and why it has absorbed words from more than 350 other languages—many originating from the most unlikely of places, such as shampoo from Hindi and kiosk from Turkish. From the Norman Conquest to the present day, Hitchings narrates the story of English as a living archive of our human experience. He uncovers the secrets behind everyday words and explores the surprising origins of our most commonplace expressions. The Secret Life of Words is a rich, lively celebration of the language and vocabulary that we too often take for granted.

Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)

Bathroom Readers' Institute

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great Reading!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I am a reader and I sure love all of Uncle John's books. So much information can be gleaned from them. All of them are fascinating and filled with knowledge. Someone really has done a lot of research in writing these books. I highly recommend all of them. They're worth it!!

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Uncle Joh's Unsinkable Bathroom is a fun book to add to your collection collection. Easy to read and full of a unique combination of information. Full of humor with a little bit of trivia and tips added, this is a great book for your winter reading. Definitely recommend.

Editorial Review:

Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with over 500 pages of humor, history, science, pop culture, and more. This all-new 21st edition in this popular series is divided into short, medium, and long sections that explore topics including: Breaking the Mayan Code, Cycads: The Most Ancient Plants on Earth, The History of the Library of Congress, Return to Chernobyl, An Untold Story of WWII: The Fighting 442, The Origin of Lasers, Japanese Scholar Rocks, The Heart of the Andes, The Luniverse, and The Truth About Jumping Beans. With Uncle John’s trademark trivia, obscure facts and figures, forgotten histories, and unknown origins, this book provides readers with hours of fun.

The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits

Erik Sass, Steve Wiegand, Editors Of Mental Floss

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Huh... I never knew that! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

...will be your exclamation every few pages with this book. Written with the trivia buff in mind, the book doesn't go into depth on its subjects. Rather, it gives you the information that will make you a hit at any cocktail party!

Great read! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Great read! It was everything I expected and more. All junior high and high school students should read this book to get an interesting understanding of the stories behind the stories and the simple and straight forward way it presents the evolution of history.

Mental Floss History of the World 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

the editors of mental floss have put together yet another entertaining and informative book. this time the topic is world history, starting tens of thousands of years ago and running up to the present. the book is packed with tons of interesting and humorous information. if you enjoy mental floss magazine and the other books put out by them, this is a must have to add to your collection.

Editorial Review:

With mental_floss's trademark smart-aleck approach, combined with hilarious (but true) trivia, world history has never been such a joyride.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1120 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's account of the American dream gone awry, has established itself as one of the most popular and widely read novels in the English language. Until now, however, no edition has printed the novel exactly as Fitzgerald intended. The first edition was marred by errors resulting from Fitzgerald's extensive rewriting in proof and the conditions under which the book was produced; moreover, the subsequent transmission of the text introduced proliferating departures from the author's words. This critical edition draws on the manuscript and surviving proofs of the novel, together with Fitzgerald's subsequent revisions to key passages, to provide the first authoritative text of The Great Gatsby. This volume also includes a detailed account of the genesis, composition, and publication of the novel; a full textual apparatus; crucial early draft material; helpful glosses on the peculiar geography and chronology of the book; and explanatory notes on topical allusions and historical references that contemporary readers might otherwise miss. Fitzgerald's masterpiece is thus brought closer to a cross-section of readers, more accessibly and more authentically than ever before. Matthew J. Bruccoli has published widely. He is the author of Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1980) and editor of New Essays on The Great Gatsby (CUP, 1985).

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Steven Pinker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Lacks 'stuff' on the physiological and cognitive origins of language 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Although Pinker is renown in the field of linguistics, I was a bit disappointed with the single sidedness of this book. In it, he examines the origins of the English language, but to a large degree fails to introduce the factors attributing to the physiological and cognitive results from the birth of language. I anticipated a book with more in-depth research on the origins and effects of language on the formation of consciousness and cognition. An example of such book is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's "Genes, Peoples, and Language,' which I highly recommend.

Still a Good Read in Spite of its Flaws 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I confess to being an unabashed fan of Steven Pinker's books on language (I am a multilingual life-long student of linguistics with time to read and study in retirement), which is why I bought this book.

I agree it has some serious flaws that have been mentioned in negative reviews, such as political and social beliefs intruding where they do not really belong. (Well, he's a psychologist, not a linguist, so I don't expect anything different.)

Still, the book is quite fascinating and contains some very compelling analysis. In particular, I find his dissection of political (or perhaps better, politically correct) speech of various groups to be well worth reading.

But what is most fascinating to me is the analysis of what I think of as "subconscious grammar." My personal favorite example of what Pinker is explaining here is when my Russian-born cleaning lady scares my cat with the vacuum and says "He is scary." (I answer, "No, the vacuum is scary, Tashi is scared.") What is there in our brains that figures out that "scary" is what emanates from elsewhere, but "scared" is what we feel?

Why is it that in German I would say "She came back to her home town" (even though I am not in her home town and never have been, but for her it is "homecoming"), but in English I am supposed to say "She went back to her home town" because she moved somewhere other than towards me?

For anyone fascinated by this sort of linguistic analysis, this book is valuable and interesting.

I also enjoyed the analysis of "slow evolution" -- the fact that we humans change our environment much faster than our brains can evolve to cope with current circumstances. He says nothing new and startling here, I think, but as always with Steven Pinker, his detailed examples and apt analogies make the subject matter come alive.

If, like me, you don't need the political stuff or the overly explicit analysis of cursing, just skim over that.

Editorial Review:

Abridged CDs ¥ 8 CDs, 10 hours

PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam

Rita Mulcahy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 318 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent Methods for Preparing for the Exam 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Rita's book helped me prepare for, and pass, the exam by getting me into the mindset of the types of questions I would face on the exam. The book also goes well beyond what you would cover solely with the PMBOK and provides useful exercises to force you to understand the material. There are also dozens of useful 'nuggets' in the book that, not surprisingly, popped up on the exam for which I was prepared.
As has been noted by other reviews, the tone of the book can often be a little caustic and derogatory but I believe that that is the author's teaching style and it can be effective most times. However, reading the book more than once makes the style less abrasive ...
Overall, an excellent guide to getting ready and passing the exam on the first try.

Editorial Review:

Can you imagine valuing a book so much that you send the author a "Thank You" letter?

Tens of thousands of people understand why PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy, PMP, is a worldwide best-seller. Is it Rita's years of PMP exam preparation experience? The endless hours of ongoing research? The interviews with project managers who failed the exam, to identify gaps in their knowledge? Or is it the razor-sharp focus on making sure project managers don't waste a single minute of their time studying any more than they absolutely have to? Actually, it's all of the above.

PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition by Rita Mulcahy contains hundreds of updates and improvements from previous editions--including new exercises and sample questions never before in print. Offering hundreds of sample questions, critical time-saving tips plus games and activities available nowhere else, this book will help you pass the PMP exam on your FIRST try.

A Guide for Using Island of the Blue Dolphins in the Classroom

PHILIP DENNY

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 609 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Just didn't excite me 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My babysitter got this out for my 8 year old daughter who loves to read, and I started reading it first to see if she would like it. I remember reading it as a child but couldn't remember whether I liked it or not. As an adult I found it somewhat interesting but not captivating. Nothing much happens, and I didn't think it was written in a way which would excite my daughter. I found myself wishing Scott ODell were a better writer--the descriptions of how food or clothing is made from natural products are so thin, compared to the Little House books (which are masterpieces). Since so many people seem to love it, I guess you just have to check it out of the library and see.

Editorial Review:

This resource is directly related to its literature equivalent and filled with a variety of cross-curricular lessons to do before, during, and after reading the book. This reproducible book includes sample plans, author information, vocabulary building ideas, cross-curriculum activities, sectional activities and quizzes, unit tests, and ideas for culminating and extending the novel.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 904 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Worth paying for on the Kindle 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Kindle owners hopefully are aware of the wealth of free editions of the classics which are available through Feedbooks and other sources.

I obtained a copy of P&P from feedbooks originally and while it was easy to get and the price was right, the overall quality of the text is not great. I've found several typos, presumably the result of OCR errors and it's somewhat distracting.

Since P&P is one of my wife's favorite books, I was delighted to see
Penguin had released an electronic edition for $0.50 complete with the usual footnotes, essays and maps that one's used to
finding in textbook editions of the classics.

The table of contents is pretty minimal. The headings include the editor's material, and the three volume headings.

Editorial Review:

It's time to rediscover the wonderful books we all cherish.

Originally published anonymously in 1813, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is one of the most widely read and most popular novels in the English language. The courtship between the independent Elisabeth Bennett and the handsome yet arrogant Mr. Darcy illuminates the page in this wonderful novel of comedy and manners.