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Numberland
Mitchell Symons
Extent: 256 pages
Size: 231x149mm
Publication Date: 19/09/2013
About the Book
The world is full of fascinating facts and statistics, but presented without context and in no particular order they can be overwhelming. Numberland: The World in Numbers interprets the world around us through numbers, breaking the most amazing and revealing of facts down to their bare bones. For example, did you know that the average eyelash lasts five months? That 400 quarter-pound hamburgers can be made out of one cow? Or that the average human will grow 590 miles of hair in their lifetime?
Ordered in easily digestible sections such as 'Around the World', 'the USA', 'Money', 'Religion' and 'History', the book navigates an ordered path through a noisy world of information overload.
About the Author
Mitchell Symons was born in 1957 in London and educated at Mill Hill School and the LSE, where he studied Law. Since leaving BBC TV, where he was a researcher and then a director, he has worked as a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He was a principal writer of early editions of the board game Trivial Pursuit and has devised many television formats. He wrote an award-winning weekly column for the Daily Express and currently writes a weekly column for the Sunday Express. He has written over sixty books – including fifteen for children with more in various stages of preparation.
He has won the Blue Peter Best Book With Facts Award for the past two years running.
In naming Mitchell as the friend he would phone (as a Phone-A-Friend) if he were appearing on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Chris Tarrant said: "Mitch knows more totally useless things about useless subjects than anybody on earth".
Reviews
- 'A fun new book has got our number', Saga
- 'the lavatory book of the year', The Guardian
- 'An extraordinary proliferation of daft numerical facts', Spectator