The Bumper Book of Things That Nobody Knows: 1001 Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

by William Hartston

There are many, many things that nobody knows. Do animals have a sense of humor? Why do we have five fingers? What did Jesus do in his youth? Has human evolution stopped? Can robots become self-aware? What goes on inside a black hole? Bringing together The Things That Nobody Knows and Even More Things That Nobody Knows , this bumper volume takes us on a guided tour of 1,001 gaps in our knowledge of cosmology, mathematics, animal behavior, medical science, music, art and literature.

Genres: Nonfiction

784 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2018

About the author

Full name: William Roland Hartston.

Reviews

[AMELIA O'REILLY · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know this book is advertised as two books in one, but I didn’t realise it would mean that quite so literally. Including both original introductions in the book as well as sticking one bibliography smack bang in the middle of the book seemed like a really odd (and jarring) choice personally, and whoever was responsible for editing/ publishing whatever edition I read needs to give it another go around as none of the page references in either book matched up. This was more forgivable while reading the first half, but then once you reached the second “book” and it suggested you flick to pages that didn’t even exist within that “book” you grew tired quickly.

Gained a star for talking about Horizontal Gene Transfer, lost a star for giving the discover of DNA to Crick and Watson. How dare a book about facts forget about my girl Rosalind Franklin.

Two of the questions made an appearance in both “books”, which meant the whole spiel about removing one of the questions from one of the books “because it’s been answered and also 1001 is a nicer number than 1002, anyway” was largely irrelevant.

I plan to use this book as a door stopper.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this is two books in one and damn does it feel like it. However it's not boring. Like the cover says it's 1001 things that nobody knows and it's packed full of those things. On one hand I now know more about animal penis bones than I want to but I also now know about the little ice age and a whole various lot of other things. My knowledge of how much we don't know about the universe was compounded into a deep niggling occasionally keep you awake at night anxiety of how much we don't know. It's better to just not think about the possible instability of the universe.

[Mairi Byatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool book if you like knowing lots of useless information!