More a small collection of answers to pub trivia questions than a serious reference. Most of the contents I never learned at school but afterwards. The book seems to focus on the US and Europe. ( )

I'm not sure what the author was trying to achieve. It is too lightweight to be a reference book, nor did it make me nostaligic about my school days. ( )

Unfortunately it got rather boring for me in the chemistry section as I had advanced courses in Chemistry in school. The physics and biology part were interesting.
All in all it was rather superficial (which wasn't so surprising given the length of the book and the complexity and vastness of topics to cover).
( )

The premise of the book is that we all learn a wealth of information in school, but forget a great deal of it, because it doesn't pertain to our everyday life. This book promises to refresh our memories of generally known subjects of information, that are probably familiar to us, but the details are lost in the recesses of time. As such, the book is divided in sections according to subject matter, such as reading or math. The most common areas of school study are utilized, followed by a final chapter that collects bits of knowledge from a variety of the elective type studies, the fine arts and mythology and the planets and so on.

As the introduction indicates, I did find that I knew much of the material covered or had studied it at some point. If I could, I would be a perpetual student - too bad no one actually pays me for that - so I rather enjoy reading scholastic material, even a book like this that doesn't go deep, it just skims the surface of stuff you should know. Perhaps the best use for the book, though, is for a bit of fun trivia quizzing amongst friends, or to relieve boredom on road trips. Indeed, we did use it for that latter purpose. There's nothing special about this book, but it does make you feel a touch smarter, and can offer entertaining quizzing games with creative application. ( )

Hardly anything new here. Can't see how in today's modern age that you would need it as a reference as anything said is very easily obtained with 2 clicks. ( )