The Second Book Of General Ignorance

From the brains behind the New York Times' bestseller, The Book of General Ignorance comes another wonderful collection of the most outrageous, fascinating, and mind-bending facts, taking on the hugely popular form of the first book in the internationally bestselling series. Just when you thought that it was safe to start showing off again, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are back with another busload of mistakes and misunderstandings. Here is a new collection of simple, perfectly obvious questions you'll be quite certain you know the answers to. Whether it's history, science, sports, geography, literature, language, medicine, the classics, or common wisdom, you'll be astonished to discover that everything you thought you knew is still hopelessly wrong. For example, do you know who made the first airplane flight? How many legs does an octopus have? How much water should you drink every day? What is the chance of tossing a coin and it landing on heads? What happens if you leave a tooth in a glass of Coke overnight? What is house dust mostly made from? What was the first dishwasher built to do? What color are oranges? Who in the world is most likely to kill you? Whatever your answers to the questions above, you can be sure that everything you think you know is wrong. The Second Book of General Ignorance is the essential text for everyone who knows they don't know everything, and an ideal stick with which to beat people who think they do.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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. 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. 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. How many legs does a centipede have? Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. 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.

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson have proven themselves to be masters at digging up obscure facts, abstruse information, and amusing anecdotes and presenting them effortlessly, somewhat slyly, with either great wit or at least a little bit of tongue in cheek. Their gifts are on full display in Quote Interesting, a lively, wonderfully enjoyable anthology of hundreds of quotes you probably have never heard before, arranged thematically from A to Z. From laugh-out-loud-funny bon mots to some real headscratchers, Lloyd and Mitchinson have gathered a universe of star-studded blurbs like: “The Beatles are dying in the wrong order.” —Victor Lewis Smith “When you forget to eat, you know you’re alive.” —Henry James “I think people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.” —Nancy Reagan “You know ‘that look’ women get when they want sex? Me neither.” —Steve Martin

Join QI's expedition into the animal kingdom to encounter 100 of its most remarkable subjects. Marvel at the elephants that walk on tiptoe, pigs that shine in the dark, and the woodlouse that drinks through its bottom. Albatrosses can fly non-stop for ten years without touching the ground. Box jellyfish have twenty-four eyes. Geese mourn their dead. Koalas don't drink. Monkeys pay to look at porn. Lobsters live for a century. Mice sing while having sex. Spiders can fly.

QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance is an illuminating collection of fun facts, perfect for general knowledge, trivia and pub quiz enthusiasts. This number-one bestseller is a comprehensive catalogue of all the interesting misconceptions, mistakes and misunderstandings in 'common knowledge' that will make you wonder why anyone bothers going to school. Now available in this handy pocket-sized edition, carry it everywhere to impress your friends, frustrate your enemies and win every argument. Henry VIII had six wives. WRONG! Everest is the highest mountain in the world. WRONG! Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. WRONG! QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance is the essential set text for everyone who's proud to admit that they don't know everything, and an ideal sack of interesting facts with which to beat people who think they do. Perfect for trivia, pub quiz and general knowledge enthusiasts, this is a number-one bestseller from the authors of The Book of General Ignorance and 1,277 Facts To Blow Your Socks Off, packed with weird, wonderful and really quite interesting facts.

***PRE-ORDER FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK . . . AGAIN: MORE OF YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY THE QI ELVES NOW*** The perfect gift for all those big and little kids in your life who ask 'why...?'. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZOE BALLPre-order the next book in this series, 222 QI Answers to Your Quite Ingenious Questions, published in paperback on 3rd November.'QI have outdone themselves!' ALAN DAVIES 'Fabulous . . . A cracker of a book!' SUE PERKINS'The QI Elves are barnstormingly brilliant.' ZOE BALL'Genuinely useful and endlessly fascinating.' THE SPECTATOR'Hilarious.' DAILY MAILThe QI Elves are the brains behind the enduringly popular BBC TV panel show QI.Every Wednesday the Elves appear on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show where they answer the ponderings and wonderings of BBC Radio 2's most inquisitive listeners.Dive into this splendid collection of listeners' unusual questions and some unexpected answers that are sure to make your head spin on topics ranging from goosebumps to grapefruit, pizza to pirates and everything in-between. Generously sprinkled with extra facts and questions from the Elves, Funny You Should Ask . . . is essential reading for the incurably curious. How much water would you need to put out the Sun?If spiders can walk on the ceiling, why can't they get out of the bath?Why do dads make such bad jokes?Why does red mean 'stop' and green mean 'go'?Can I dig a tunnel to the other side of the Earth?How do plant seeds know which way is up?Can you fill up a black hole?Who popularised the recorder, and where can I get hold of them?For more from the team behind QI, visit qi.com. You can also follow QI's fact-filled Twitter account @qikipedia and listen to their weekly podcast at nosuchthingasafish.comFor more mind-boggling nuggets of wisdom check out the QI FACTS SERIES

Ian Fleming. John le Carré. Len Deighton. Mick Herron. The brilliant plotting of Herron’s twice CWA Dagger Award-winning Slough House series of spy novels is matched only by his storytelling gift and an ear for viciously funny political satire. “Mick Herron is the John le Carré of our generation.”—Val McDermid At MI5 headquarters Regent’s Park, First Desk Claude Whelan is learning the ropes the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he’s facing attack from all directions: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote, and now has his sights set on Number Ten; from the showboat’s wife, a tabloid columnist, who’s crucifying Whelan in print; from the PM’s favorite Muslim, who’s about to be elected mayor of the West Midlands, despite the dark secret he’s hiding; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who’s alert for Claude’s every stumble. Meanwhile, the country’s being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks. Over at Slough House, the MI5 satellite office for outcast and demoted spies, the agents are struggling with personal problems: repressed grief, various addictions, retail paralysis, and the nagging suspicion that their newest colleague is a psychopath. Plus someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho. But collectively, they’re about to rediscover their greatest strength—that of making a bad situation much, much worse. It’s a good thing Jackson Lamb knows the rules. Because those things aren’t going to break themselves.

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.