Knowledge Book, The: Everything You Need to Know to Get by in the 21st Century Paperback – September 15, 2009

This book is a decade old now. I'd love to see a new edition come out. But regardless, I like this book enough that I just bought a replacement after losing it in a flood.Here's the subjects: The Universe, The Earth, Biology, Chemistry, Physics & Technology, Mathematics, Politics/Law/Economy, Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Visual Arts, Architecture, Literature, Music, Film.All in bite-sized chunks of information with lots of illustrations. Easy to read but not juvenile. (There's no separate history section. It's covered under other topics.)

This book is great. People are going to find reasons to complain about anything in life. Is this book perfect? No, few are. However, it is full of information, well written, has amazing pictures, and is a great coffee table book for almost anyone. National Geographic's name is known for amazing pictures, and interesting articles, this book is consisten with the National Geographic quality we have all come to enjoy, respect, and love.

What can I say? This book has everything that you could possibly need. I bought this for my girlfriend, and she absolutely loves it! It is a high quality manufactured book with great pictures, and captions too. You can study the details of literally everything. I can't say enough great things about this all being in one book. National Geographic hit a home run. This is great for people who unfortunately didn't get a chance to learn all of this in school.

Lots to learn here. Well organized. Keep in mind when you purchase that it lacks the past 20 years so its original price would be too much. Enjoy!

I was able to "sneak" several peaks at the items listed in this interesting book before wrapping it up as a Christmas gift. The pictures were so well done and the descriptions easy to read and appreciate. It has been referred to several times and is still a welcome reference book.

I really like this book, as a high schooler, I read it throughout the day. It starts off elaborating the birth of the universe, then the birth of Earth. It explains every little point between as well. It then goes to development of living organisms, then to human history. Did you know that some moons from the outer planets have volcanoes that erupt ice rather than lava?

The layout is good. Full of pictures. This would be especially great for kids and those who need encouragement to read or aren't huge readers. It's better for a younger person than The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which I love as well but doesn't have a lot of pictures or color so it is better for those who don't need pictures and flashy things in order to read.

I like the data simplification and images but lacks organization. Also some typos, for instance in the Universe section 1 light year travels 5.88 trillion miles not billion.