"Biologists say our primal drives are food, sex, and shelter, no different from the animals. We say there a fourth drive which makes us uniquely human - curiosity." From the introduction by John Lloyd.

John probably needs to add a little story named "Is it true that curiosity is what makes us different from other animals?" to this book, and then promptly disprove it.

Other then that, the book is awesome.

For this reader at least, it wasn't "Everything You Think You Know is Wrong," it was more just pedantry. For probably half of the "facts." There were a couple that were flat out wrong, and many more that were misleading (see: pedantry). Or just trying to be clever. This book is garbage (although there are plenty of facts that are right, there is so much bad info that you need to just toss the thing).

One of the questions is "what is three times as dangerous as war?" The answer is "working," which the author explains is because more people die from work-related incidents than die in war each year. That's like saying that eating is more dangerous than war due to food-borne illnesses, and of course also (according to the numbers given) the author ignores the ancillary civilian casualties from battle, starvation, poor water quality, displacement, etc that comes with war. So if the author gets to simply count total deaths from war versus work, then I get to be a pedant as well and include the civilian casualties, which are almost always, from WWII forward, greater than military casualties, and thus once again make war more dangerous than work. And I am also sure that the author is including only state-sanctioned wars and conflicts, and not the ethnic cleansing (which, by the way, author, looks a lot like war) which, when combined with state actions, far surpasses any accidents at the smelting plant.

There are others that are so pedantic that they border on outright false, and that a scientist would say "welllllll, yeahhhhh, I guess you could interpret it that way." One example that stood out is "Does the earth go around the moon or the moon around the earth?" Here I will quote the paragraph:
"Both. They go around each other.
"The two bodies orbit a common center of gravity located about 1,000 miles below the surface of the earth [???], so the earh makes three different rotations: around it's own axis, around the sun, and around this point."
There is a difference in density within the earth's core that means the earth's magnetic field is not that of a perfect sphere comprised of a single element (the mantle and outer core move around like material in an egg). But to interpret that as "the earth revolves on its axis and 'around this point' is disingenuous. And to say that the earth revolves around the moon is just wrong.

One more. This last one is so bad I tossed the book across the room, because either the author is taking pedantry to some new, unexplored level, or they're just stupid. Here we go:

"What did human beings evolve from?
Not apes. And certainly not monkeys."

The author goes on to describe how we did not descend from modern apes, but instead both of us evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Here is where I hope the author is just a layperson, and not someone educated. This reader has a background in Anthropology, and I can tell you that we *certainly,* without question, have a common ape ancestor. This is not in doubt in the scientific world. There is no legitimate challenge to this. Genetic evidence (which we had in abundance well before this book was published) has proven this. And the ancestor would have been an ape. No, we did not descend from gorillas. But we do have a common ancestor in the ape Family.

Crap book. There are lots of "oh, that's cool!" moments in the book that probably garner the high ratings, but as a book of facts this thing is a joke.

Perfekt bok att ha bredvid sängen för småläsning när man inte orkar gå in i en historia. Roligt, lärorikt och en ”hör-på-det-här”-bok.

Unbelievable facts. It really is "Quite an interesting book". Learning these facts have really made me feel stupid. Its true when they say it'll make me think "Why did I bother going to school?"
Excellent read.

Highly entertaining, funny and informative. Lots of stuff you will never have use for, but wish someone would ask you about, just to prove you know it.

I think I can safely say that I've read most of this book, and I really love it. I'll be able to pester people with lots of "did you know?"s from this book in the future.

6/10. Mildly interesting at times.

Fascinating and funny information on a wide variety of topics. Whenever I read something in this book I want to go tell someone about it.