Mildly entertaining collection of miscellany around time, uses of, wastes of, blah blah blah. Not really worth the (however much) you'd spend at a bookstore. It felt to me like something I've stumbled across on the internet countless times in the past, but bundled into paper form and bound with a cheap cover. Since I got this free from the LT ER group, I can't/won't complain. It was, as I said, mildly interesting. -KA ( )

I was very disappointed with this book. I love trivia and lists, but the individual entries aren't very interesting on their own, and the larger sections aren't cohesive enough to be worth reading as a group. ( )

As one might expect, this is a collection of assorted factoids about time - more specifically, how people spend their time. It's not nearly as interesting as I'd hoped. For one thing, almost all the data is from surveys, and many of those are from internet surveys, and we all know how accurate those are. The results are often contradictory as well: for example, on one page we learn that smoking takes nine years off your life, but just two pages later we learn it's only four. This general lack of continuity isn't helped any by the large number of typos, some quite prominent. How long do rock banks last? I didn't understand until I read the list and realized it was supposed to be rock bands. In short, unless you are desperate for a book of trivia about how people may or may not actually spend their time, I'd suggest giving this one a miss. ( )

Aldernman's book is the book you want to keep by your bedside. The numbers and measures are provoking, entertaining, and enlightening. This is the sort of book every kid and adult will enjoy. I am already looking forward to future editions and more chapters!

I have spent my working life dealing with time and its measurement. Scheduling buses is perhaps more complicated than it seems on the surface. One has to deal with how much running time to give a bus by time of day, one needs to konw how many people are being carried, as that affects trip length besides customer satisfaction. One has to create 8-houur workdays for the the drivers, perhaps even workweeks that are close to 40 hours. The one must try to keep overtime vs. extra time given to make-up an 8 hour day at a minimum. One must detrmine how earlyor late a bus route runs, if it is not going to operate 24 hours. One must try to work in express or limited stop trips, and figure out how much branching of routes you want to do.

So, I always like looking at books that deal with time and ones experience with it. Alderman looks at all kinds of expreience with time, like emergency room waits (shortest is in Iowa, longest in Utah); how long food may last (I couldn't find yoghurt, but sour cream can be kept 10-14 days after sell-by date). Looking at travel times, the fastest land trip between Chicago and Milwaukee is by train at 1:29 hours, the longest is 29 hours for walking. The book doesn't mention it, by my Official Railway Guide from 1958 shows trains abe to do this trip in 80 minutes.

This is a fun book to look through. There are interactive questions, and you'll be surprsied at some of the answers. ( )