Geoff Tibballs

Behold, probably one of the finest collections of strange, interesting, colorfully presented, and jaw-dropping facts around today. I spent a weekend looking through this book with my boyfriend (both of us are self-proclaimed nerds for collections of fun facts) and we couldn’t get enough of the short, weird blurbs and pretty pictures.

SEEING IS BELIEVING! is organized into sections of particular interests. There are chapters for facts relating to people, natural phenomena, technology, the show more animal kingdom, and more. If you’re an equal-opportunity science lover like me, no page is more or less interesting than the other: all are colorful, well-designed, and frightfully interesting. When I took breaks from reading it with my boyfriend to do some schoolwork, every his frequent cries of fascination or horror would inexorably draw me back to read whatever cool page he was on.

This book is not one you can read in one sitting, and indeed you would not want to. Instead, it’s perfect for the occasional browse, for when you have five minutes to open to a random page and devour it. My boyfriend loved that it was a perfect read for those with a short attention span, as you’re never pressured to read the facts in a particular order or amount to understand what it’s about.

My one complaint regards the construction of the book. While I was reading, the white “binding strip” that’s supposed to be located in the spine kept on sliding out, to my frustration. Whether or not this is an anomaly, I do not know, and I think that the book’s intended audience—fact-loving kids or science nerds—will not mind.

Overall, SEEING IS BELIEVING! is an ideal thirty-dollar Christmas or birthday present for the kid who begs for a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records each year it’s printed. (And, uh, yeah, while I didn’t beg, I certainly didn’t mind getting it for a present!) Its color, layout, and carefully selected thousands of crazy facts will be sure to shock and impress anyone who dares to look beyond the cool holographic blinking eye on the cover. show less

This is a very full and comprehensive collection of almost all accounts by Titanic survivors and others related to these events, as well as a wide range of newspaper articles from before, during and after the events. As such, it contains many tragic and moving accounts, though also, inevitably, rather a lot of duplication. It is very useful as a compendium of relevant contemporary accounts, though it could have done with a little more contextualisation and analysis to balance the undoubtedly show more valuable comtemporary testimony. Contains very useful lists of passengers and crew, biographies of survivors and ships, plus a glossary (very usefully searchable on my Kindle edition) which rounds off its valuable reference function. 4/5 show less

A detailed look at the Titanic disaster as told almost entirely through first-hand reports, letters, and testimony. Much effort has been made to put the stories into a semblance of chronological order to make sense of the events of the evening the Titanic sank, but after a while the whole senseless tragedy of the thing becomes overwhelming. Much like the events of that night, I suppose.

This book is very British, I can hear a lot of the quotes in the very British accent of on old gentleman. That being said, as an American, I didn't understand the humor of quite a few of the entries. I'm sure they're hilarious, I just don't have the cultural background to understand them. Still a fun book.