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Product Description
Book Description
John Hodgman-bestselling author, The Daily Show's "Resident Expert", minor television celebrity, and deranged millionaire-brings us the third and final installment in his trilogy of Complete World Knowledge.
In 2005, Dutton published The Areas of My Expertise, a handy little book of Complete World Knowledge, marked by the distinction that all of the fascinating trivia and amazing true facts were completely made up by its author, John Hodgman. At the time, Hodgman was merely a former literary agent and occasional scribbler of fake trivia. In short: a nobody.
But during an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an incredible transformation occurred. He became a famous minor television personality. You may ask: During his whirlwind tornado ride through the high ether of minor fame and outrageous fortune, did John Hodgman forget how to write books of fake trivia? The answer is: Yes. Briefly. But soon, he remembered!
And so he returned, crashing his Kansas farmhouse down upon the wicked witch of ignorance with More Information Than You Require, a New York Times bestseller containing even more mesmerizing and essential fake trivia, including seven hundred mole-man names (and their occupations).
And now, John Hodgman completes his vision with That Is All, the last book in a trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. Like its predecessors, That Is All compiles incredibly handy made-up facts into brief articles, overlong lists, and beguiling narratives on new and familiar themes. It picks up exactly where More Information left off-specifically, at page 596-and finally completes COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE, just in time for the return of Quetzalcoatl and the end of human history in 2012.
About the Author
John Hodgman lives in New York City, where he curates and hosts “The Little Gray Book Lectures,” a monthly colloquium of readings, songs, and dubious scholarship. He is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a frequent voice on public radio’s This American Life. Further fiction, nonfiction, and genres in between have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, One-Story, and The Believer. He has performed at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, as well as on the great stages of Chicago, Philadelphia, and London’s Barbican.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, poignant, absurd,
By
This review is from: That Is All (Hardcover)
Hodgman's third and final book in his trilogy of fake trivia leaves you with a sense of amazement. At first, it seems insane that anyone would publish not just one but three books of fake trivia, and just as insane that anyone would write them. Even more surprising that all three would be really good - hilarious, poignant and the last is the best of all. The books don't just stand up to repeated reading, they demand it.In THAT IS ALL, Hodgman pulls together the disparate, seemingly random threads from the first two into a more cohesive whole that is hilarious, touching and poignant. The comparison that leaps to mind, of all things, is Tolkien's "The Return of the King." Like his fellow Daily Show alumnus Stephen Colbert, Hodgman has created an alter ego of himself, with the same name. The genius of his voice is that he by posing as a fake expert in everything, he has created a character who can be superior and erudite while disarming people who hate intellectuals - and they are legion. He makes fun of smarty-pants elitist braniacs by being one, and in this subversive way he can mock expertise while delivering it and making it palatable. No. Small. Trick. Especially if you are sustaining it over three books. Hodgman's many gifts include not just quickness, a gift for the insane and absurd, but the insight that ephemera and trivia are important, at least as a metaphor for us, and for our lives - fleeting and small in the grand scheme of things and all the more precious and tender as a result.
2.0 out of 5 stars
More of the same,
This review is from: That Is All (Hardcover)
You can't blame Hodgman for trying to have his own original brand of humor, and there are some amusing bits in there, but after one has read The Areas of my Expertise and More Information than You Require, this new installment starts to wear a bit thin. Or perhaps i'm not quite insane enough to fully enjoy it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This really is all...,
By Nicholas Campbell (Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: That Is All (Hardcover)
There is really no need for anything else to be said. Brilliant. I am a huge fan of the first 2 books, but That Is All is the strongest of the 3. The material is a little more centrally themed (a lot of ties back to Ragnarok run throughout) and it reads a little more straightforwardly than the other 2 books. It really feels like a culminating effort, like the first 2 books were subtley leading to this. I don't know if that was Hodgman's original intention or if That Is All has been retrofitted to feel like that, but it's amazing. Of course there is the typical brilliance you've come to expect from this series, but I found a much higher frequency of laugh-out-loud-isms in this one. The other 2 also had laugh out loud moments, but this one really feels like Hodgman took the best ideas from the previous books (not that he took material from the other books, but thematically, i.e. his tables and charts and the flow of the book are stronger than ever), processed it through that uniquely and wonderfully strange brain of his, and then really went in for the kill. Even the back of the book jacket itself made me laugh out loud, with the picture of Hodgman in character as the deranged millionaire with the ferret skeleton (check out this link if you haven't yet [...]) and the single quote from Neil Gaiman, just perfect. Fantastic stuff, and highly, highly recommended!
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