Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks and Anecdotes


Isaac Asimov - 1992
    Here are more than 700 of Isaac Asimov's favorite jokes, cleverest limericks and funniest stories.

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters


Peter Vronsky - 2004
    Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky's one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true crime phenomenon.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten


Robert Fulghum - 1988
    The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot-air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to “fly” . . . life lessons hidden in the laundry pile . . . magical qualities found in a box of crayons . . . hide-and-seek vs. sardines—and how these games relate to the nature of God. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is brimming with the very stuff of life and the significance found in the smallest details.

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed


Karen Elizabeth Gordon - 1984
    Black-&-white illustrations throughout.IntroductionSentences & what we mean by them Words & what kinds of words they areNouns Verbs VerbalsMore on verbs Adjectives & adverbsPronouns Arriving at agreementsPhrases Clauses FragmentsComma splicesThe creation of sentences

A Short History of Nearly Everything


Bill Bryson - 2003
    Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

Bad Science


Ben Goldacre - 2008
    When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an 'Aqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water, turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. 'Like some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: 'before my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the Bad Science column in the Guardian. His book is about all the 'bad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own 'bad science' moments from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics ads.

Subversive Cross Stitch: 50 F*cking Clever Designs for Your Sassy Side


Julie Jackson - 2015
    With alphabet charts and easy-to-follow instructions for every design,  Subversive Cross Stitch: 50 F*cking Clever Designs For Your Sassy Side  includes everything you need to get your craft on from the original instigator of subversive stitching.

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language


Mark Forsyth - 2011
    It's an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

How to Drive a Tank and Other Everyday Tips for the Modern Gentleman


Frank Coles - 2009
    But does he know how to hide a dead body? Or cry with diginity? If not, this book's for him' COSMOPOLITAN, Book of the MonthA TOP GEAR magazine Book of the MonthPRODUCT DESCRIPTIONCall yourself a man? You do? Do you even know what a real man is? Are you a six-foot-one Adonis who wears all the latest fashions, moisturises regularly, visits spas for pleasure and never does anything wrong? Or do you drink twenty pints every Friday night, guzzle a kebab on the way home and then fart yourself to sleep? It's time to stop being the man everyone expects you to be and be the one you want to be.Learn how to:- Pick locks, safes and chastity belts- Disappear without a trace in 24 hours- Win a gun fight- Survive the wild- Ride a wall of death- Work a 4-hour week- Survive any crisis- Make things go boom- Drive cars sideways- Be a great dad…and, of course, drive a tank. Fast-paced and funny, this is the ultimate bible for the modern man.* A 'dangerous book for men' - how to embrace life to the full and how to be your own man * Top Gear meets 101 Things To Do Before You Die (Richard Horne)

The Book of Useless Information


Noel Botham - 2006
    Then again, maybe not. But to The Useless Information Society, any fact that passes its gasp-inducing, not-a-lot-of-people-know-that test merits inclusion in this fascinating but ultimately useless book... Did you know (or do you care)...- That fish scales are used to make lipstick?- Why organized crime accounts for ten percent of the United States's annual income?- The name of the first CD pressed in the United States?- The last year that can be written upside-down or right side-up and appear the same?- The shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar(R)?- How much Elvis weighed at the time of his death?- What the suits in a deck of cards represent?- How many Quarter Pounders can be made from one cow?- How interesting useless information can be?The Book of Useless Information answers these teasers and is packed with facts and figures that will captivate you--and anyone who shares your joy in the pursuit of pointless knowledge.

The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy


Valerie Ann Worwood - 1993
    A necessary resource for anyone interested in alternative approaches to healing, this book contains more than 600 easy-to-follow recipes for essential oil treatments and aromatherapy.

The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class


David S. Kidder - 2006
    The Intellectual Devotional is a secular version of the same—a collection of 365 short lessons that will inspire and invigorate the reader every day of the year. Each daily digest of wisdom is drawn from one of seven fields of knowledge: history, literature, philosophy, mathematics and science, religion, fine arts, and music.Impress your friends by explaining Plato's Cave Allegory, pepper your cocktail party conversation with opera terms, and unlock the mystery of how batteries work. Daily readings range from important passages in literature to basic principles of physics, from pivotal events in history to images of famous paintings with accompanying analysis. The book's goal is to refresh knowledge we've forgotten, make new discoveries, and exercise modes of thinking that are ordinarily neglected once our school days are behind us. Offering an escape from the daily grind to contemplate higher things, The Intellectual Devotional is a great way to awaken in the morning or to revitalize one's mind before retiring in the evening.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler


Ryan North - 2018
    . . and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on humanity's original timeline? And how hard would it be to domesticate a giant wombat? With this book as your guide, you'll survive--and thrive--in any period in Earth's history. Bestselling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North shows you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted--from first principles. This illustrated manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up. Deeply researched, irreverent, and significantly more fun than being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, How to Invent Everything will make you smarter, more competent, and completely prepared to become the most important and influential person ever.

The De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew


Cracked.com - 2013
    For decades your teachers, authority figures and textbooks have been lying to you. You do not have five senses. Your tongue doesn't have neatly segregated taste-bud zones. You don't know what the pyramids really looked like. You're even pooping wrong - Jesus, you're a wreck!But it's going to be okay. Because we're here to help. Packed with more sexy facts than the Encyclopedia Pornographica, the Cracked De-Textbook will teach you about the true stars of history, why you picture everything from Velociraptors to Ancient Rome incorrectly, and finally, at long last - how to pop a proper squat. This book was built from the ground up to systematically seek out, dismantle and destroy the many untruths that years of misguided education have left festering inside of you, and leave you a smarter person...whether you like it or not. The De-Textbook is a merciless, brutal learning machine. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are informed.

The Foxfire Book: Hog Dressing; Log Cabin Building; Mountain Crafts and Foods; Planting by the Signs; Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing


Eliot Wigginton - 1972
    This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living."