From devastating remarks made by teachers («Addled, backward dunce» said about young Thomas Edison) to the rich and famous on campus (William Randolph Hearst kept a pet alligator at Harvard), this is a spirited and humorous collection of facts about teachers and students.
Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo are the Queen and King of trivia, relied upon by game shows including Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and game manufacturers. Millions of people read their daily newspaper column and together they've written twenty books. The sixth book in the Totally Riveting Utterly Entertaining (TRUE) Trivia Series puts a magnifying lens on the wacky world of writers. It Takes a Certain Type to Be a Writer will tell you everything you could possibly want, or were afraid, to know about writers, publishing, and the writing life. Bite-sized facts are organized into chapters including «Everyone's a Critic», «Stranger than Fiction», «From Bad to Verse,» «Kiddie Lit», «A Word's Worth,» and many more. You'll learn things like: where Proust wrote (in bed with gloves on); what Voltaire drank (70 cups of coffee a day); and how James Cain prepared himself for yet another publisher's rejection. (The title The Postman Always Rings Twice had nothing to do with the plot of the best-selling novel. It was a private joke of author James Cain. His postman would ring his doorbell twice whenever the many-times-rejected manuscript came back from a publisher.)
What is it about the game of golf that can cause otherwise normal folks to lose all perspective? More than one person has seen their loved one become consumed with the details of the quality of wood used in clubs, or the type of cleats on their shoes. What is it about the game of golf that can cause otherwise normal folks to lose all perspective? More than one person has seen their loved one become consumed with the details of the quality of wood used in clubs, the type of cleats on their shoes, the distance between their feet, and the direction of the wind, not to mention statistics, statistics, statistics. Featuring more than 500 facts about the sport that Paul Harvey describes as “a game in which you shout ‘fore,’ shoot six, and write down five.” Readers learn that experts believe shepherds invented the game using their staffs to bat around stones and that 12 percent of all lightning fatalities happen on the golf course.
It's no joke that we are all fascinated by the medical profession and the people in it. With Doctors Killed George Washington, trivia mavens Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo explore accidental medical discoveries, medical follies, bizarre cures, and more. This titillating tome puts doctors and medical history under the microscope and exposes more than 500 little-known facts and outrageous oddities from the wild world of medicine. Did you know? Before the advent of surgery, ancient Egyptian doctors put their patients under by hitting them on the head with a mallet.
We are all fascinated by the legal system and the people behind it. With Dracula Was a Lawyer, trivia experts Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo explore lawyers we love to hate (until we need one!), the pitfalls in our legal system, celebrity lawyers, and more. This compendium puts lawyers and legal history on trial and exposes over 500 outrageous oddities from the wild world of law.