Books about Curiosity from Amazon.com

Author Stephen Windwalker's 6500-word excerpted article is a Kindle owner's dream, newly packed with great tips and resources including: How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email, A Dozen More Great Tips & Shortcuts to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Kindle, Play a Game on Your Kindle, Keep a Photo Album on Your Kindle, Bookmark Any Page, Paginate Your Home Page, Sort Your Home Page, Move Quickly Through a Document, Check the Time, Set a Personal Screen Saver, Skip a Song, Justify Your Text (or Not), Slideshow, A Favorite Source for Free Books, Refresh Revised Content At No Charge, Kindle Accessories, and Links to Great Guides and References. Readers may update this content at any time through Amazon's "Your Media Library" feature. This piece is packed with chapters excerpted from the author's forthcoming book, which will be freely available as an upgrade to readers who have already purchased this piece when the book becomes available later in 2008..
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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..
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History isn't always made by great armies colliding or by great civilizations rising or falling Sometimes it's made when a chauffeur takes a wrong turn, a scientist forgets to clean up his lab, or a drunken soldier gets a bit rowdy. That's the kind of history you'll find in The Greatest Stories Never Told.

This is history candy -- the good stuff. Here are 100 tales to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy: more than two thousand years of history filled with courage, cowardice, hope, triumph, sex, intrigue, folly, humor, and ambition. It's a historical delight and a visual feast with hundreds of photographs, drawings, and maps that bring each story to life. A new discovery waits on every page: stories that changed the course of history and stories that affected what you had for breakfast this morning.

Consider:

• The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer
• Some Roman officials were so corrupt that they actually stole time itself
• Three cigars changed the course of the Civil War
• The Scottish kilt was invented by an Englishman

Based on the popular Timelab 2000® history minutes hosted by Sam Waterston on The History Channel®, this collection of fascinating historical tidbits will have you shaking your head in wonder and disbelief. But they're all true. And you'll soon find yourself telling them to your friends.

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How much do you know about . . .

• Obesity
• Sleep
• Meteors
• Aliens
• Bees
• Sperm banks
• Sex in space
• Duct tape
• Germs
• Airport security
• Death
• Ancient weapons
• Rats
• The Internet
• Birth
• Weather
• Milk
• Mosquitoes
• Your body
• Space disasters

DISCOVER'S 20 Things You Didn't Know About Everything is the first book written by the editors of the award-winning DISCOVER magazine Based on DISCOVER'S most eagerly awaited monthly column, "20 Things You Didn't Know About," this original book looks at many popular—and sometimes unexpected—topics in science and technology, and reveals quirky, intriguing, and little-known facts.

Whether you're just curious or think you already know everything, this book is guaranteed to expand your mind.

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Japan has a way of thinking that is just . . . different. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tokyo-born journalist Lisa Katayama's collection of urawaza (a Japanese word for secret lifestyle tricks and techniques). Want to turbocharge your sled? Spray the bottom with nonstick cooking spray. Can't find someone to water your plants while you're away? Place the plant on a water-soaked diaper, so it slowly absorbs water over time. The subject of popular TV shows and numerous books in Japan, these unusually clever solutions to everyday problems have never before been published in English until now! Urawaza collects more than 100 once-secret tricks, offering step-by-step directions and explanations in an eye-catching package as unconventional as its contents..
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The seminal biography of the twentieth century’s premier chronicler of the paranormal, Charles Fort—a man whose very name gave rise to an adjective, fortean, to describe the unexplained.

By the early 1920s, Americans were discovering that the world was a strange place.

Charles Fort could demonstrate that it was even stranger than anyone suspected. Frogs fell from the sky. Blood rained from the heavens. Mysterious airships visited the Earth. Dogs talked. People disappeared. Fort asked why, but, even more vexing, he also asked why we werenÂ’t paying attention.

Here is the first fully rendered literary biography of the man who, more than any other figure, would define our idea of the anomalous and paranormal. In Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, the acclaimed historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer goes deeply into the life of Charles Fort as he saw himself: first and foremost, a writer.

At the same time, Steinmeyer tells the story of an era in which the certainties of religion and science were being turned on their heads. And of how Fort—significantly—was the first man who challenged those orthodoxies not on the grounds of some counter-fundamentalism of his own but simply for the plainest of reasons: they didn’t work. In so doing, Fort gave voice to a generation of doubters who would neither accept the “straight story” of scholastic science nor credulously embrace fantastical visions. Instead, Charles Fort demanded of his readers and admirers the most radical of human acts: Thinking..
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Guinness World Records 2008 continues to builds on the intriguing, informative, inspiring and instructional records and superlatives that have made Guinness World Records one of the most famous brands and books in the world. This year, we've created a revolutionary new design and filled it with more records than ever before.

New content areas include:


* FORENSIC SCIENCE: An insight into the real-life superlatives of the crime-scene investigators... A must for CSI fans!
* THE ENVIRONMENT: How real is the threat of global warming? A look at some of the recent environmental records...
* HEALTH OF THE NATION: We take a snapshot of human health today and ask: who's the fittest and who's the fattest?
* GAMES & PUZZLES: An interactive spread that allows you to test your smarts: from the first ever crossword question to the fastest sudoku, how will you fare?
* EPIC ENDEAVOURS: Our largest-ever celebration of the superheroes who head for the poles, scale the heights, cross the globe and probe the depths...
* TERRORISM & CONFLICT: Hard-hitting records and reportage on the deadliest threats to our modern society
* BRANDS & ADVERTISING: The biggest names and even bigger budgets behind the brands and adverts we're exposed to every day
* HOME ENTERTAINMENT and CONSUMER TECH: The gadgets and media that we simply can't live without - from the best-selling DVDs to the most powerful computer games consoles.

As well as all the updated annual favorites including; ACTION SPORTS, CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE, INCREDIBLE STUNTS and INSPIRATIONAL PEOPLE..
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