Product Description

Is it true what they say about Catherine the Great and the horse? How do they measure snow? How do they get the stripes into toothpaste? Do cats have navels? How are coins taken out of circulation? Why do men have nipples?

Cecil Adams has tackled these questions and more in his outspoken, uncompromising, and always entertaining weekly newspaper column, The Straight Dope. Now the best of these questions and answers--from the profound to the ridiculous--are collected in book form so that you can know a little about a lot. Exploding myths, revealing shocking truths, and explaining all major mysteries of the cosmos, The Straight Dope contains more than four hundred fully-indexed entries on topics ranging from sex to consumer products, science to history, and rock 'n' roll to much, much more!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #670790 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-24
• Released on: 1998-02-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Amazon.com
This collection of Adams' best newspaper columns answers with erudition and wit all the weird questions Americans ponder to distraction. Why didn't the Incas invent the wheel? Is the frequency of bald women on the increase? And how many square feet of flesh on the human body? Incredibly sarcastic, knowledgeable and entertaining, The Straight Dope makes a great bathroom book or gift book or personal treasure.

From the Publisher
This is the book that STARTED IT ALL! It's Cecil's very first book collection! We've been dying to publish this book in trade paperback to match the other book in the series ever since we started publishing the "Straight Dope" columns in book form. And now we're finally able to make this format available to all of the fans who have Cecil's other books in this size. So enjoy! --E. Zack, Sr. Editor

From the Back Cover
"[THE STRAIGHT DOPE] TELLS MORE THAN ANYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT 1,001 THINGS."
--New York Daily News

"Cecil Adams is the Answer Man . . . . Though he is cantankerous, a wiseacre, and a compulsive punster, you can't help but like a guy who knows where all the baby pigeons are, and why wintergreen Life Savers emit pint-sized clouds of blue sparks when chewed in the dark."
--Newsday

Customer Reviews

A compilation of weird, exotic and funny trivia things
First of all let me tell you Cecil Adams' work is not for impressionable people. He is quite outspoken and spits out things in some straightforward and perhaps rude way.
If that's ok for you and you are interested in trivia things, then I reccommend this book to you.
This is the very first book of his set of 4 and covers most of the most interesting articles appeaered on his column at the Chicago Reader since 1973.
Cecil is an eccentric guy who claims to be the "smartest" guy who knows it all around the world. its said he has devoted a whole house to compile and archive articles and data of various aspects deriving from Biology to Laws.
Tip: you can find most of his articles on line, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to read a couple of them first and find out your likeness for his way of writing.

The best Adams since John Quincy!
Dude, man, this book was like...totally not like its title said it would be man. I mean, the only buzz I got off it was inhaling the fumes from the cover. No Dope anywhere to be found! It was like...
...
...a bummer.

Fortunately there were also no rants on circumcision, SUVs, the liberal bias of the media, words that end in "gry," or the fact that Enterprise could beat out a Star Destroyer any day of the week so I'd give this book six stars if possible.

Knowledge abound with a funny twist...
I ordered this book a few weeks back not really sure what exactly to expect from it, by intrigued by the description of it. We often forget that before the internet was so common, finding out answers to odd questions was a good deal harder than it is in this point and click age. Libraries had to be visited, research done, etc. Once I got it I began to leaf through the pages and skim some of the questions and was very pleasantly surprised by both the content and the style of writing.

The premise is simple enough, it was a newspaper column in which people could write in with whatever questions that they had, and Cecil would research them out and give an answer. What makes the book so worth while is the style in which Cecil answers the questions. He has quite a way with words and some of the witticisms he spews back at those asking the questions are outright hilarious.

The book is divided into several chapters ranging from language, to sports, entertainment, and many many others so that you can jump straight into a particular line of questions and answers. Having read this, the first collection of his articles, I am planning on buying other collections released soon. This was truly a very fun read that I highly reccomend everyone else pick up and give a chance.