The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance is a collection of strange, bizarre, funny, ridiculous, and inexplicable laws and ordinances that actually exist in various places. The majority of laws discussed in this book come from the United States, but there's a small section dedicated to laws in other (mostly English-speaking) countries. Each law / ordinance is presented with relevant quotes from the law itself, and accompanied with humorous / ironic / snarky commentary from the author.

I've read Kevin Underhill's blog, Lowering the Bar, and I enjoy it quite a lot. This book is more-or-less a collection of his blog posts, so I had a good sense of what I would get from this book and expected to enjoy it.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

As it turns out, what's funny in small daily doses is somewhat less so when consumed in large chunks all at once. The gag gets stale. The "Introduction and Disclaimer" at the very beginning is the funniest part.

I was also hoping that Mr. Underhill would use the expanded format of a book to talk more about why and how these sorts of spurious and frivolous laws come to be, but if anything, the book gives the reader less commentary than some of his blog posts.

In the end, I'm not clear why this needs to be a book. Mr. Underhill has his blog and the concept works much better in that format. ( )

A quick read that is fairly fun. It sometimes just goes for the easy laugh, when a little work in why some dumb law was passed might have been even funnier or at least added some depth. Probably get just as much enjoyment occasionally just reading the blog that this is based on. ( )

This book leads to important questions, like "would zombie George Washington automatically outrank everyone in the US army?"

This is a run through some very odd laws that have been passed throughout history. Better structured than most books of its type, it's arranged by date for older laws, then alphabetically by US state for modern American laws and then alphabetically by country for international laws. The book has also been checked, these laws aren't factoids the author has read in a source or heard through word-of-mouth, he's gone and checked that they were all actual laws at some point. The translation of the German is decent too.

I think the ancient laws are the most interesting, because, as the author hints at, if we could understand what was behind some of them, we understand those cultures better, but the whole book is interesting.

It's bitty, the way compilation books are, but it's good fun to dip in and out of, and gives backgrounds for most of the laws which mean, well they don't make sense, but at least make more sense. Definitely recommended. ( )

This was hilarious. The writer not only finds obscure and seemingly ridiculous laws, but also, the commentary he makes is a riot. It's not the kind of book that keeps you reading constantly, but it is something fun to pick up and put down when you're constantly being interrupted. ( )

Definitely funny - I laughed out loud on average once every other page - but ultimately it's a book of amusing trivia. ( )