Know It All and The Chemist.





We've all had this problem: You're at a cocktail party, and much to your dismay, you find yourself unable to mingle. Finding yourself completely without a conversational ice breaker, there's nothing for it but to stand against the wall, hiding behind a cocktail until a quiet opening is revealed through which you can sneak out the door. Luckily for the world, with the publication of Know It All: The Little Book of Essential Knowledge, this problem has now been solved.

A reference book that covers everything that ever was, Know It All devotes two pages to each subject. Two pages on the Big Bang, two pages on mathematics in its entirety, two pages on World War II. Now, this little book was brought to us by our friends at Reader's Digest, so expecting anything but a condensed version of everything completely misses the point. Miraculously, they made it all the way through the book without a single joke about Humor in Uniform, so forget about breaking the ice by telling jokes that will be greeted with a strained, polite smile. Instead, they provide you with "Conversation Starters" that are peppered throughout.

Here's one: "Insects might be tiny, but there are so many of them that ants and termites alone are believed by some scientists to account for as much as twenty percent of the world's combined mass of all creatures, known as the animal biomass."

I actually think that's interesting, but I have no idea how to continue with this educational tidbit as a way of making conversation, because in that one sentence I've completely exhausted my knowledge of insect census-taking.

ME: Insects might be tiny, but there are so many of them that ants and termites alone are believed by some scientists to account for as much as twenty percent of the world's combined mass of all creatures, known as the animal biomass.

Possible reactions:

HIM: Really? What is the total percentage of all insects in the animal biomass?

ME: ....

or

HIM: What?

ME: Never mind.

or

HIM: says nothing, slowly edges away.


I'm sorry to say, outside an insect-lovers convention, that milkshake ain't gonna bring any boys to the yard.


My very favorite conversation starter was one I found in the section called "Conflicts of the Modern Age," regarding the current war in Iraq:

"The United States rained 'Shock and Awe" on Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2003. Was the attack 'preemptive,' defined in military usage as based on incontrovertible evidence of imminent attack? Or was it 'preventive,' based on possible future threats?"

Oh. My. GOOOOODDDDDDDDDD.

Oh my god

Oh my god

Oh my god

Oh my god.

Oh, Reader's Digest.

I searched through the rest of the book, but did not find Conversation Starter: Was George Walker Bush a great president? Or was he the greatest president? Nor, in the "Story of Life" section, did I find any reference to "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy," so I suppose the conservative bent could have been a lot worse. I have to say, I think it is irresponsible of the writers not to have included a footnote for that conversation starter that read Caution! If you are in Berkeley, this Conversation Starter could get you pelted with Miniature Organic Soy Pigs in a Blanket.

But I kid! I kid! The book is really quite interesting and entertaining, and I mean that in a good way, even if, in their 2 pages on World War II, they neglected to mention the Holocaust. (I'm serious. They do bring it up in another section later on, but when I got to this section and found there was no mention of it, I almost choked on my own kidney, which abruptly got lodged in my throat.)

What this book is good for, truth be told, is getting six-year-olds interested in the way the world works, and expanding from this starting point with different books. This is, objectively speaking, a Good Thing. Used for this specific purpose, the Conversation Starters are excellent. Except for the one on the Iraq War, which would get you pelted with tiny soy pigs in a blanket by my kids.

ME: Insects might be tiny, but there are so many of them that ants and termites alone are believed by some scientists to account for as much as twenty percent of the world's combined mass of all creatures, known as the animal biomass.

THEM: Gross! How many insects are there in the world?

ME: Let's go look on the internet and find out!

THEM: Okay!

or

ME: The United States rained 'Shock and Awe" on Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2003. Was the attack 'preemptive,' defined in military usage as based on incontrovertible evidence of imminent attack? Or was it 'preventive,' based on possible future threats?

THEM: Neither one, Mom. "Shock and Awe" was an illegal attack on a country who did nothing to us and had no plans to harm us, resulting in the mass murder of millions of innocent Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers, causing the country to disintegrate into Civil War, thereby creating the terrorist environment we claimed we were trying to prevent.

ME: Oh, right.

THEM: Hold still while we pelt you with these little hot dogs.

Oh, for Pete's sake. I've done nothing but make fun of this book, and honestly, shame on me. It's not bad AT ALL. In fact, it taught me several things I didn't know, such as the existence of the jerboa, a member of the rodent family that looks like a mouse/kangaroo blend with ginormous ears. The jerboa is well worth a Google search, because it is hands down awesome.

Plus, the whole section about astronomy is interesting. I know next to nothing about it, and, let's face it, am not smart enough to ever be able to understand it, so two pages per topic, distilling everything down to its simplest essence, is perfect.

So, I am a jerk who clearly has never forgiven Reader's Digest for butchering My Friend Flicka in their condensed books series my parents bought and put in the living room as bookshelf filler. Little did they know they'd raise a book maniac who actually devoured these books and got pissed later when it was revealed how much was left out. And now I cannot help but poking relentless fun at all things Reader's Digest, even when it is not deserved.

I did start a book that deserves a lot of abuse, The Chemist, written by a doctor dabbling in literature. I couldn't get past the prologue, because it was 100% torture porn, and I've had more than enough torture porn in American pop culture. Not to mention that it was made pointedly clear that the 3 murderers had faces as "dark as the night," and the murder victim had "long blonde hair." Look, I spent way too many years looking at interracial porn for my Honeysuckle customers, trying to find something that wasn't filmed for the express purpose for white men to jerk off to white women being sexually degraded by black men. The difficulty of finding egalitarian interracial sex scenes based on respect and fun - a problem that even temporarily stumped Nina Hartley, for god's sake - makes it impossible for me to find this anything but really, really racist. I know we just elected a black man to the highest office in the land, while that is a great leap forward, we just haven't shed our racial baggage to be able to accept this situation with no titillating sexually-based racially degrading subtext. Not to mention that the scene was written to have a titillating sexually-based racially degrading subtext that involves torturing a naked woman. To death.

Fuck this book, and fuck the guy who wrote it.

I will make it up to the writers of Know It All, who worked very hard to compile all that information and present it in a clear, easy-to-understand way, by recommending that you buy it as an elementary starting point for you and your kids to develop an interest in science (did I mention the end of each section has multiple choice quizzes? I have no intention of ever doing them, but if your kids are bored and you're desperate, well there you go), and to use the other book to balance an uneven table. Or, better yet, to refuse to have it in your home all together.

_______________________________




Know It All: The Little Book of Essential Knowledge
by Susan Aldridge, Elizabeth King Humphrey, and Julie Whitaker
October, 2008 by The Reader's Digest Association
Hardcover, 256pp
ISBN: 978-0-7621-0933-3