An Incomplete Education

Rating:
Summary: Great book to read while exercising
Review: I read this book while exercing on my Ellipse. Very enjoyable. I found the explanation of entropy much clearer than any I had in thermodynamics courses, and a lot more amusing. One error in the book that I found - Stagecoach, the original movie, the stage was going to Lordsburg (NM) not Cheyenne, although If I were on that stage, I would have preferred to go to Cheyenne.

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Summary: Really annoying presenters!
Review: The two people who present this book on the audiotape version are really annoying. I did listen to the whole tape, but fought the urge to turn it off the entire time because I couldn't stand listening to the voices. The information presented was marginal. The discussions of music and opera would have been a lot more effective if snippets of the actual music we're included. Doesn't seem like it would be that hard since this is an audiotape. I used this tape to study for the MSAT (a standardized test for elementary school teachers in Calif.) and didn't find it very helpful.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: As someone looking for a concise "adult's encyclopedia", I found this extremely disappointing. The authors have organized the book sensibly and chosen the topics well, but they insist on utilizing a tongue-in cheek style that I didn't find amusing, and certainly isn't appropriate to a work characterized as a serious reference tool.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for both answers and suggestions.
Review: This is a fantastic read if you didn't get the breadth you were looking for in your schooling. Covering pretty much all the stuff they don't have in engineering school, "An Incomplete Education" gives enough detail so that you can make an insightful comment at a party, but not so much detail that it reads like a thesis.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: This is a must-have
Review: My one and only complaint is that the book is a tad heavy if one is reading it while nursing a baby (multi-tasking Mommy style).

Rating:
Summary: Hard to find, but grab it anyway!
Review: Everything you ever wanted to know, or needed to know but didn't even know it, is probably in this book.

Think of this book as an abridged encyclopedia. Judy Jones and William Wilson have compiled more information than you could imagine in one easy-to-read, even fun-to-read, volume. Clearly organized, well written, respectful, and intelligent, this book will make you an instant experton topics you hadn't even thought of.

Read from start to end, or just pick a page at random, you'll be entertained, informed, and educated. Art, History, Politics, Religion, Sciences, Music, Philosophy, Architecture, Lierature, and Psychology. Even a crash couse on the do's and don'ts of writing English. You name it, it's in here somewhere.

My only complaint, it's time for an update. Or a Volume 2. This one's a must have

Rating:
Summary: Items you didn't pursue in the term paper are here.
Review: Did you ever wonder if an earl ranks higher than a baron or what that quote at the beginning of the chapter meant or where it came from? The answers are here. One can drift around in this book full of information only touched on while reading the required books in school or sail in search of specific topics for which there was not time before the shipwreck. Of course, those who are completely educated could just thumb through and congratulate themselves while wondering who in the world wouldn't know THAT. Either way, the time spent waiting for rescue from the island would seem much shorter with this book in hand. In fact, I may just want to stay right there in my hammock and find out what all those musical terms mean or become acquainted with the twelve literary characters essential to making charming chitchat. Just think how learned I shall appear when I get home. I only hope my glasses arrived on the island with me and this book! Janie Dillon([e-mail])

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Summary: Some Reviewers are Causing Raucous Laughter Themselves
Review: If you have little to no sense of humor -- don't read this book. The "flippant, sarcastic tone" is used by the authors for a REASON, and it isn't merely to "try to be funny." If you don't get THAT, then no -- you won't "get" this book. As far as it is possible to be an "admirer" of an inanimate object, then I suppose I am an "admirer" of _An Incomplete Education._ And, this may come as a shock to a few book critics, but I have fond memories of the _ample_ amount of time that I've spent in university library stacks. No "radical professors" or "P.C. activists" wounded me, or even irritated me enough to run me off campus. I love learning, and I love learning to look at things from others' perspectives, which is one reason this book "works" so well. One reviewer here asked, of the authors' statements regarding different types of art, if WE are not "supposed" to -- ultimately -- decide what we deem to be "worth looking at?" Ummmm -- that's rather the *point*. If you don't "get" that, then please don't "get" this book and then publicly look down your nose as you type snide remarks aimed in the direction of us "low-brows" who have the audacity to find this tome delightful precisely because of the "treatment" that all of the included subject matter is given. It's called "writing style" and "authors' voice," and if you don't grasp the style and voice of these two authors, you will miss practically every point being made. Please take this under consideration, and if this is YOU -- then *please* don't waste your time, and then "our" time, as you take out your literary frustrations in public pixels. Thank you for your support.

Rating:
Summary: Okay, I guess...for what it is...
Review: Did any of this book's admirers ever spend time in a university library, or were the poor lambs too badly wounded by their encounters with radical professors and P.C. activists to spend any more time on campus than was actually necessary? AIC is certainly not a bad reference book, but the humor really is pretty lame; there's a difference between sounding light, witty and discursive and merely jokey and unserious in an O'Rourkian vein, and you don't have to be the kind of sap who sings along to "Spanish Bombs" to be dismayed by the adolescent sarcasm in the book's discussion of political history, though you might actually have to read a bit of Chomsky to see what's wrong with the section on his ideas. (After the Cataclysm really is a bad book, and he showed poor judgment in the Faurrisson affair, but not in the ways the authors suggest.) I mean, getting beyond the sloganizing is a crucial first step, but it isn't the last one, even in a book that's only intended to introduce the reader to a vast array of subjects. The other sections are fine, as far as I know, but like the authors I'm not comfortably familiar with the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, so I may not be the best judge of these things...

Rating:
Summary: Nothing incomplete about it
Review: As one review stated, you'll find everything you learned in school but have forgotten, and all the things you DIDN'T learn. This is a well-put-together book of all the things you wanted to know, but felt stupid asking. Would also recommend two other great books. One is along the lines of this one (Eats, Shoot & Leaves) and the other is fiction (The Bark of the Dogwood). Both are excellent as is this one.