Everybody's Book of Knowledge: A Giant Compendium of Yesteryear's Facts

Description

Knowledge is power. Whether it's round the water cooler or the Sunday evening pub quiz, a lull at a dinner party or the back of the school bus, we need to know if a sloth eats upside down, why onions make us cry, or how to tie a sheepshank. "Everybody's Book of Knowledge" is here to help you prepare for those awkward moments when the golden wheat of facts needs to be separated from the chaff of stuff and nonsense. The nuggets of knowledge and wonderful illustrations selected for this book were originally found in a two-volume 1930s encyclopedia called "Everybody's Enquire Within". They were the Google of their day. In fact, when Tim Berners-Lee was developing what became the Internet, he first called it "ENQUIRE", recalling nights as a child with his head lost in a dusty encyclopedia. Our interests may have changed and the world may seem smaller, but the answers to all the pithy questions posed here (a few of which might be debatable seventy years on!) still have the power to fascinate readers young and old and fill them with the wonder of knowledge.

Charles Ray, Editor of the original two-volume set Everybody's Enquire Within, published in the 1930s.