The Slightly Crooked Dope

Cafe Society
1

What other books out there answer questions like The Straight Dope books?

I just found Stumpers!, edited by Fred. R. Shapiro, at the library. It’s a collection of answers to questions that stumped reference librarians. The funniest part about it is that the questions are so exactly similar to the ones that get asked here that it’s like reading a compendium of GQ. They still have a web site up at: http://domin.dom.edu/depts/gslis/stumpers/

Anyway, the book came out way back in 1998. That surprised me because I look for books like this and never even heard of it before.

Now I’m wondering how many more Dope-lite books are out there.

I know of a whole bunch already.

David Feldman’s Imponderables series.

Joel Achenbach’s Why Things Are and sequels.

Marilyn vos Savage’s books. [Hey, I said I knew about them, not that I’m recommending them.]

There’s also similar books that aren’t in Q&A format like:

Tom Burnam’s The Dictionary of Misinformation and More Misinformation

Ashley Montagu & Edward Darling, The Prevalence of Nonsense

J. Allan Varasdi, Myth Information

I know this is going to veer off in two seconds, but just for the record I’m not really looking for books of Urban Legends or trivia lists. Just the slightly crooked dope.

2

What Einstein Didn’t Know deals with science-based questions.

3

William Poundstone’s Big Secrets and its two sequels are very entertaining, telling you about the formula for Coca Cola, KFC, secrets of the Freemasons, subliminal messages, Rorschach tests, etc.

4

the Natural History of Nonsense and On the Spoor of Spooks by Bergen Evans, the proto-Cecil.

5

Exapno, I read the Dictionary of Misinformation a while back, but I seem to recall seeing several items in there that I knew for certain weren’t true.

And I second the nomination of William Poundstone’s Big Secrets books; his research is terrifically thorough, plus he’s a really entertaining writer.

You might also enjoy the Imponderables books, though the research isn’t quite as well-documented as Poundstone’s. Or Cecil’s.

(On preview: I note that the Imponderables site appeas to be the author’s blog, but it’s got a few links to stuff about the books.)

6

Jack Mingo has written anumber of books in this genre, including the “Ask Jeeves” series.

7

I love these kind of books.

A few you’re missing off the top of my head:

The Explainer from the editors of Slate.

Everything You Prentend to Know and …Pretend to Know About Food

If you want your information more focused, you could cehck out the Don’t Know Much series. I like that one myself.

8

Her name is Vos Savant, although I like it better your way.

9

Don’t have it with me at the moment, so I don’t have the author, but I have a pretty good trivia type book called Who Knew

I also have a very old (early 80’s) copy of a book called The Guiness Book of Answers
It has information on everything under the sun.

10

(emphasis mine)
Some people are so very, very young.

Early 80’s is VERY OLD???
Bergen Evans’ books date from the 1940s.

11

I have The Natural History of Nonsense myself, and a lot of the others in fact. I’ve been collecting these for a very long time. Does anyone remember William Vergara’s series of Q&A science books from the 60s and 70s? Do you realize that the first Straight Dope book came out in 1984? I think of that as just yesterday, but I guess it’s now very old. As are Cal, Chuck and I. :smack:

I’ll check out some of the others mentioned, although most of them get mediocre reviews on Amazon. (Unlike TSD, which is 5-star. Hey, does anyone remember when Cecil was funny? Or do you have to be really, really old? :slight_smile: )

12

Very old huh. I’m early 80’s too. In fact, I’m the earliest you can get in the 80’s, born in 1980 (unless you’re talking about the 1680’s or some other pre-twentieth century 80’s).

13

Exapno, I followed your link to some of the questions that had stumped librarians. The fifth one on the list was one that has prompted me to call the reference desk when I saw it attributed to R.W. Emerson on the internet. It didn’t sound at all like Emerson to me. I gave the ref librarian the quote and asked her who the author was. She was gone for a moment and then returned to tell me that it was Ralph Waldo Emerson. I asked what her source was. Unable to find it anywhere else, she was using some vague source on the internet as an authority.

14

As I found out a few weeks ago when I put a Green Day tape in my radio and my neice commented, in what I’m sure she meant as an attempt to be sociable, that she liked “old music”.