I loved those book series. In my own defense, I was ten at the time.
I think I still have the tote bag that came with “Myths and Legends” in a closet somewhere.
You can pick up a lot of these at library book sales and flea markets for really low prices (often a dollar a book).
My two favorites are Time Frame and The Good Cook.
A childhood friend of mine who grew up to become a painter told me that our Famous Artists series made him what he was. I don’t remember that his own family owned any books (I would have noticed).
Bah. This is the only cookbook worth owning.
In one of their series there’s a book about (and called) The Desert. It has a full page picture of a close-up of a Wolf Spider’s rather hideous face (somehow made extra evil looking). Traumatized my arachnophobic older brother the first time he unknowingly flipped to it! To this day he won’t look at it.
I did a couple of Google searches but I can’t seem to find it. Plenty of other shots of Wolf Spiders but not that exact one (I’m not overly afraid of spiders, but I’d know that pic if I saw it, pretty scary looking)…
I remember that book and the incredible picture. Scared the crap out of me for a couple of years.
Gesundheit!
What I remember is the commercials where one person would ask the other person questions about the subject matter of the book, and the other person would simply say, smugly, over and over, “Read the book!”
I thought it would be funny for the questioner to finally punch the other guy in the face. That never happened, though.
Ahh, good times. I had a friend in elementary school whose parents subscribed to those. We had a blast looking at them whenever he brought them into class.
Here’s the commercial. The Stonehenge bit happens at about 1:15.
I have “The World We Live In” right here beside me. That was the first book I bought with my own money! (I’m sure there was a little supplement from my father’s wallet.) I definitely will be keeping that and “The Epic of Man,” also from Life.
I got the Mysteries of the Unexplained series when I was in junior high and I loved it to bits… and I am probably not alone among the skeptical bunch who frequent this message board in having spent my youth reading credulous books about ghosts, UFOs and the paranormal. Eventually you come across Martin Gardner or Carl Sagan in the stacks.
Oh, I have the Mathematics book too! My cousin had it, and I loved looking at it when I was a kid and we visited the relatives.
So I found my copy at the library booksale. I learned a lot from that book.
I also have the “Foods of the World” series, the “Good Cook” series, and parts of several of the history series.