50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know, Volume 2

Customer Reviews

• Decent bathroom reading.  Jul 30, 2004 (145 of 171 found this helpful)

  If you're looking for earth-shattering news, this is not the book for you. While there were a couple of eye openers, most of the information is well known if you've kept up on current events.
  Some information is noteworthy. The fact that people are killed or injured from prescription medication is not news. Tragic? Yes, but it's not a secret. It is something that has been studied and needs to be addressed.
  Some information is pointless. Carl Sagan was a pothead? Why am I not supposed to know that? More importantly, what's the significance of that? Drug and alcohol use is hardly a rarity among great thinkers.
  Some information is questionable. Someone in the goverment considered biological warfare in Afghanistan? I'd be surprised if someone didn't at least think of that. Creativity is not bad in itself, but the execution of the idea may be. Considering that Rumsfeld and Rice put the kibosh on the idea, I'd say the government acted correctly, and thus, no shocker here.
  There are definitely a few winners in here. Not a great book, but okay to have in the bathroom for some short reads.

• Little facts more people should know  Nov 18, 2003 (20 of 22 found this helpful)

  No, it's not a book that's majorly in-depth, and it won't reveal anything new to anyone at all seriously interested in things the mainstream media doesn't tend to tell us, because they'll know most of the facts already. But that isn't really the point of the book, is it? It's 50 things that most people - the most people who mostly get their information from the mainstream media, that most people - don't know about.

  And some of them are pretty darn important. Like the US making plans to provoke terrorist attacks as part of the war on terrorism; juries right to judge the law, not just the fact; the obligation (or rather non-obligation) of the police; medical error and prescription drug death rates (amazingly high).

  Other facts are more amusing and interesting than they are important, but even the entries that seemed rather obvious to me (the rather duh fact that advertisers exercise massive control over the media, for instance) contained interesting figures, facts and research.

  If you've already read up on these kinds of topics, this book isn't going to add anything much to your knowledge. But it's a great little book to have sitting in your bathroom or on a table in a waiting room for other people to leaf through!

• A Fun Romp through the World of "Secrets"  Apr 22, 2006 (14 of 17 found this helpful)

  Russ Kick has written a fun little book that combines the "truthiness" of tabloid journalism with paranoid conspiracy theory in 50 little bite-size chunks. It's a blast to read if you don't take it too seriously.
  
  Some of the "secrets" disclosed in Kick's book are pretty tame and obvious. For example, some African-Americans did indeed fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The Germans did use IBM computers to keep track of many concentration camp inmates. And of course, the government is known to lie, dissemble and distort the facts about just about anything when the political pressure is on.
  
  On the other hand, Kick himself is way off base on several counts. His technique is pretty easy to decipher: Take a little known fact from the history books and blow it up into a massive "revelation" meant to shock and astound the reader. Examples include:
  
  -- The police aren't legally obligated to protect you
  -- The Supreme Court is wishy-washy on the use of illegal drugs
  -- Many early feminists opposed abortion (for different reasons)
  -- One of the Popes wrote an erotic book
  -- Some environmentalists strongly support nuclear power
  
  When you really dig into the details, you'll find that most of these claims either half-truths or overly inflated trivia. Nevertheless, "50 Things" is a great conversation starter and you can read the entire book in about an hour. Good for grins, if nothing else.
  
  

• Tries. Does not succeed.  Mar 23, 2006 (11 of 13 found this helpful)

  Russ Kick, 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know (disinfo,com, 2003)
  
  Don't you love books like this? Their titles promise you the secrets of the universe (which universe, of course, depends on what you're reading into the title), but what they deliver is invariably not what you were looking for. Expect the same here.
  
  When he's on his game, Kick does deliver some interesting and relatively obscure data to the reader. When he's not, which is unfortunately all too often, he hands us stuff that's been on at least a thousand trivia lists circling the internet at any given time. Combine this with Kick's obvious slant towards some of his subject matter, which is so predictable it's almost stereotypical, and you get a book that, despite its slimness, can be wearying at times.
  
  Good to pick up and riffle through once in a while looking for something random. Not a keeper, though. ** ½

• Getting the Truth Out  Mar 3, 2007 (4 of 4 found this helpful)

  I got this little book in a package of discount books I received a little while ago. I didn't know anything about it and I wasn't aware it was a sequel to another book I hadn't even read when I flipped through it and began reading. It turned out to be a fun way to spend an hour or so.
  
  I like "trivia" books like this one. Of course, the conceit behind this one is that we're being told "things we're not supposed to know." Some of the claims made here are debatable but there are also many interesting items: ten percent of the population weren't fathered by the man they think is their father, fetuses masturbate, the Declaration of Independence contains a racially derogatory remark, Audubon killed all the birds he painted, etc.
  
  The book fails a bit by a tendency towards repetition (especially in 9/11 & war in Iraq info) which makes it seem a bit padded. Maybe this is because it's hard to reach the same heights in a sequel but, since I haven't read the original, I can't judge. Still, there's enough good stuff here to make it worth the investment of the time it takes to read it.