Random Obsessions: Trivia You Can't Live Without

by Nicholas Belardes and Brad Listi

Did you know Thomas Jefferson's grandson was an ax murderer? Don't you delight knowing some dinosaurs were teeny tiny as hens? Before buying that plane ticket, don't you NEED to know which exotic islands still have cannibals? Wonder what it's like to live in Hell Town at the End of the World? How about an ailment so surreal it's named after Alice in Wonderland? In Random Obsessions: Trivia You Can't Live Without, historian Nick Belardes has dug into...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573443603
• ISBN13: 9781573443609
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Viva Editions
• Length: 257 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Obsessed with the Random

I didn't know whether to cherry-pick my way through Random Obsession based on the blurb, or simply sit down and pore my way through it. This is the high-octane version of Trivial Pursuit; some of the strangest, weirdest, and most unbelievably true things you're going to read. Ever. Flavor chemistry? Check. Serpents of light? Check. Thomas Jefferson's ax-murdering grandson? Check (possibly). If you're looking for confirmation that the world really is as strange as place as you secretly believe, then look no further than Random Obsessions.

The Quirky World of Nick Beldares

Belardes, Nick. "Random Obsessions: Trivia You Can't Live Without", Viva Editions, 2009. The Quirky Genius of Nick Belardes Amos Lassen Here is a book for pure enjoyment written by an imaginative writer with a new unique voice. He tells stories that make you sit up--stories from the dark side. This is just a lot of fun. The book is informatively silly, filled with useless information that is great to start a conversation with. It explains the weird and the bizarre and the divine. There are stories of the wacky, the wild, the random and tells you everything you never really wanted to know. Here is trivia that is great but, as I said, totally useless. The facts are real and ridiculous and the book is fascinating. I could say so much more but I would rather you get the book and find out for yourself.

Random Obsessions Tantalizingly Feeds Your Curiousities...

Ever need an ice-breaker for conversations? Don't get those boring required text books like they make you read in university communications classrooms. Get Random Obsessions! Without giving away too much info about the book, I've just got to say there's a subject to spark a talk about everything from people suffering bizarre ailments as an alien hand syndrome to wondering if cannibalism does still exist in islands of the Pacific. I found myself reading the book at every little break I had during the day at work to take my imagination on a wonderful trivial adventure. Random Obsessions is a great coffee table read or lunch hour getaway. It's pure entertainment and spark for discussion. Get yours!

As Best As It Gets

Pause for a moment and think of all the useless agenda-based knowledge you've been force-fed in high school and in college. Most of this so-called intelligence gets spat out from our over-worked craniums the moment after a final. Now consider this: Have you ever tried using such knowledge at a dinner table or a party for the sake of having a stimulating conversation? If so, more times than not, you may have been the only person participating in the slowly dying discussion. So what's lacking? Well, try integrating some bizarre tidbits loaded with idiosyncratic knowledge into your social conversations and watch your audience grow in interest faster than you'd imagine possible. The book to help you get there is "Random Obsessions: Trivia You Can't Live Without" by Nick Belardes. A professor of history, TV and online journalist, prolific blogger, avid videographer, and Twitter pioneer, Nick Belardes has dutifully compiled a strange and often humorous reference book that will nourish your famished intellectual consciousness, and implant masses of bizarre facts surrounding history and science, occupational insights and eccentric artists, and much more. Take for example Belardes's discussion on secret religious cults of wannabe Star Wars Jedis; a burlesque performance in honor of Barack Obama days before his Inaugural Address; Napoleon losing the battle of Waterloo because of a ferocious case of hemorrhoids; Thomas Jefferson's grandson being a notorious axe murder; the table manners and etiquette of cannibals; or the alleged wanderings of supernatural beings within the vast 400 miles of tunnel beneath Las Vegas. (I suppose what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas -- forever.) With "Random Obsessions", Nick Belardes appeases the ravenous crowd of quirky intellects who all yearn for the baffling facts often missed by the greater academia. Random Obsessions should be a mandatory read for any scholarly institution priding itself on well-rounded education. This is the knowledge students will retain. This is the reference book that will help blossom your daily social conversations. It's the perfect gift for high school grads looking to find obscure information in order to challenge their college professors, or perhaps their misguided high school teachers who've beleaguered young minds with mundane state-mandated curricula. I hope at some point Parker Brothers will manufacture the "Random Obsessions" board game. That would certainly make for a pleasurable after-dinner activity. [This review was previously published [...] on June 24, 2009.]