Anna Mantzaris

OK guide for the Freedom trail but may not live up to its $15.95 price tag for history buffs


This book is an attractive and concise history of historical sites on the Freedom Trail. It would make an OK momento for those who enjoyed the Freedom Trail in that it has pictures and being slim, it would not add much weight for a flight outside of Boston. Unfortunately, the book has the feeling of repackaged material for the tourist that is available for free elsewhere. I noticed a minor historical inaccuracies. During the Revolutionary War there were actually fifteen American colonials if one remembers to count East and West Florida. This book restates the common error in counting only 13.

I grew up a few miles outside of Boston and worked for years in Boson but have yet to walk the Freedom Trail. I spent a pleasant hour or so reading this book. I took this book out of my public library, so for me the price was right. Otherwise, I would try to get it at a discount.… (más)

This book should be retitled "1001 things I already knew half of anyway". This is nearly a useless book. Heavily US oriented, it contains a lot of information that most people would consider general knowledge such as:

- The US didn't enter WWI until 1917.
- Elephants are the largest land mammal.
- D-Day was 6/6/44.
- Ronald Reagan was the oldest president to take office.
- Shooting stars aren't really stars (really? I'd be worried if they were).
- The eye of a hurricane is the centre of the storm.

And the list goes on.

Read this book if you are an idiot or have been living under a rock your entire life and have never gathered any general knowledge. I read it in about an hour because I thought it might contain some interesting info, it didn't.

… (más)

Most of the factoids in this book I already knew, and a fair majority of the rest were things I didn't care if I knew, but I did indeed find a solid handful of items I didn't know I wanted to know, so I'll call this one a win. I like weird little trivia books. And while I was sad to learn that Crayola retired "raw umber" in 1990, I was amused to learn that both leotard and doily are named after men, and that there is no documentation of when people first started wearing hats. Sure, this isn't the sort of book you'd want to sit down and read straight through (which, um, I guess is exactly what I did), but it's reasonably entertaining to page through from time to time.… (más)