Fabulous Fallacies: More Than 300 Popular Beliefs That Are Not True

Rating:
Summary: Fun and interesting
Review: I found this book at my library and it looked intriguing so I checked it out. That was yesterday and today I'm almost done with it. Most of the entries are interesting, even if simply quibbling. Many of them I was already aware of as being fallacies (like spinach making you strong or that Columbus was one of the few of his day who thought the earth to be round) but there were still many more where I found my self going, "oh wow!" or "aha!" or "oh, interesting." (the real title of "Whistler's Mother", the mistaken identity of The Jazz Singer being the first "talkie," and finding that Thoreau was never really a recluse at all) One of my favorite sections is the one on religion and specifically the Bible--especially when the source is the Bible itself! (there was no *apple*, and Noah did not necessarily take 2 of each animal on his ark, oh and Lucifer is not the Devil.)

At other times I was just happy to see an oft misquoted passages or misconceptions corrected (like the famous lines "Play it again, Sam" being attributed to Humphry Bogart's character in Casablance--that's simply not what he said in the movie!" or the fac that Marie Antoinette never said "let them eat cake"! the poor girl has gone down in history as a horrible, unthinking, elitist pig which is just simply unfair).

Of course there are many entries that don't interest me in the least ("who invented baseball") but it's easy to skip over those and skim others. It's one of those books that you can pick up, read a few pages at random, learn a thing or two and put down again. Of course, you could also sit yourself in your room for hours determined to become one of the "enlightened ones" like yours truly and try to read the entire book in two days (only a couple hundred pages of quick reading). The writing style is very unimposing and almost chatty and I even found myself laughing out loud every now and then--although I can not garentee this response out of everyone as I have been told I have a rather dry sense of humour. Anyway, I found it fun and possibly useful for upcoming games of trivial pursuit.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Book
Review: I thought this book was very interesting and I learned a few things. Somethings I had always known, some I just discovered recently like what the Emacipation Proclaimation was really all about and somethings I was surprised to learn while reading the book. The original book is almost 20 years old so many of the fallacies have been brought up a long time ago. Still if you are interested in history or myths and legends this book is great to have.

Rating:
Summary: "Everybody is wrong," including Tuleja
Review: There are plenty of interesting and useful facts in this book. However, some of Tuleja's "facts" are simply quibbling over technicalities. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves? Well, not actually on the day it was issued, no. But since it made slaves in rebellious areas free as soon as those areas were under Union control, it did free millions of slaves. To say it freed no slaves is like saying no one died as a result of World War II because no battles between Allies and Axis took place on September 1, 1939. George Washington was not the first President of the United States? Technically, the term "president" was used earlier in U.S. history, but in every sense that we mean "president" (i.e., the Constitutional sense), Washington was first... as acknowledged by every list of U.S. presidents since Washington's time. It's not as though people of the time instantly forgot the earlier "presidents"; they just considered them irrelevant. And so on. Again, many of the facts in the book are correct and significant, but on some occasions, Tuleja lets a need for contrarianism get the better of him.

Rating:
Summary: "Everybody is wrong," including Tuleja
Review: There are plenty of interesting and useful facts in this book. However, some of Tuleja's "facts" are simply quibbling over technicalities. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves? Well, not actually on the day it was issued, no. But since it made slaves in rebellious areas free as soon as those areas were under Union control, it did free millions of slaves. To say it freed no slaves is like saying no one died as a result of World War II because no battles between Allies and Axis took place on September 1, 1939. George Washington was not the first President of the United States? Technically, the term "president" was used earlier in U.S. history, but in every sense that we mean "president" (i.e., the Constitutional sense), Washington was first... as acknowledged by every list of U.S. presidents since Washington's time. It's not as though people of the time instantly forgot the earlier "presidents"; they just considered them irrelevant. And so on. Again, many of the facts in the book are correct and significant, but on some occasions, Tuleja lets a need for contrarianism get the better of him.