The Twelve Best Months of the Year: More Light-Hearted Lunacy from the Globe and Mail's Social Studies Column

By Michael Kesterton

Michael Kesterton, fact collector extraordinaire - a man said to spend his days on the Internet and his nights in labyrinthine archives, thumbing through mildewed newsprint and thick manila folders - submits for your reading pleasure and possible edification his second eclectic collection of Sense and Silliness, chosen from his daily column, Social Studies, which appears on the back page of the Globe and Mail. Appropriately titled The Twelve Best Months of the Year, this modestly priced yet invaluable volume is guaranteed to bring, each and every month of the year, the sparkle of intellectual amusement to what might otherwise be a dreary, mind-numbing life. Dip into these pages and see Nellie Bly, intrepid female journalist, rise to the New York World's 1889 challenge to go around the world in 80 days. She did it in a breakneck 72 days and six hours. Flip a few pages and learn why there's no point in chasing a leprechaun. (He won't have a pot of gold, just a purse containing a shilling or two.) Enhance your party small talk a thousandfold with such tidbits as the fact that the Belgian comedian Georges Le Gloupier, who throws custard pies at prominent people he considers pompous, has hit philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy five times. Go ahead, treat yourself to a year's worth of such indispensable brain snacks and feel the thrill of absurdity and the sweet shiver of innocent inquisitiveness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 077104559X
• ISBN13: 9780771045592
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.1" x 8.4"