Book Review | Ripley's Believe It or Not: 
Encyclopedia of the Bizarre, Amazing, Strange, Inexplicable, Weird and All True!
By Julie Mooney and the editors of Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Written by: JP

The Ripley's Believe It or Not editors have put out many books over the years.  This one is a large hardcover type that you find on coffee tables.  It has many single item trivia (The sandwich was invented by the Earl of Sandwich!),
photographs and many drawings from the series. 

One immediate problem is the phrase "All True!"  The editors make no efforts for fact checking.  Thus, the book has such strange listings like: "Frank Tower, an oiler, swam away from 3 major sea disasters. --The Titanic in 1912, The Empress of Ireland in 1914, and the Lusitania in 1915."  This is fiction.  Interestingly it appears to be popularized by other Ripley books.

Typically, it also makes generalities.  "Garlic belongs to the lily family." In truth, Botanists consider the garlic plant a member of either the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, or the lily family, Liliaceae.

The book has topics in alphabetic order. Chapter 24 is "Food & Drink"
chapter 50 is "Plants Trees & Fungus" [sic - should be fungi] and Chapter 62 is "Weapons & Warfare."  Useful but not really helpful. "The mushroom is a fruit," is listed under Mushrooms under Food & Drink and not under Plants Trees & Fungus [sic].  A mushroom is not a fruit.  It is part of the fungi kingdom.  Also in Food & Drink it lists under Fruits that, "Lemon is a berry, not a fruit!" It is both a fruit and a berry.  Fruit is the part of a flowering plant that contains the plant's seeds. The lemon is a type of berry called a hesperidium.

Yet another detail escaping the editors is the grouping of trivia. There is an inconsistent effort to group trivia within chapters. In Chapter 36 "Law" there are headings for Courts, Laws, Lawyers, Judgments, etc.  Under Laws, the odd laws of one state are not together. "It was once against the law in California to set a mousetrap without a hunting permit." on page 191 is separated from "It was once against the law in California to hunt whales from a car!" by an odd law in Kent, England. (It was never against the law to set a
mousetrap in California.  It is still illegal to hunt whales in California. Even from a boat.  It is also illegal to shoot from a moving vehicle.) There are eight laws listed as being based in California.  It would be easier if the laws were clustered together. This chapter even repeats the old myth about Donald Duck being banned in Finland.

It is due to books like this that some people will believe actor Clint Eastwood
was elected as Mayor of Carmel, California on the platform to legalize ice cream parlors (page 158).  In truth, part of his platform was to legalize hand
dip ice cream such as served in cones and cups. It had been made illegal to
reduce street litter.

If you use this book to win bets, you can be proven wrong by any pedantic with access to the internet.  Some trivia will be almost impossible to check. It omits dates, locations, and cities that would help.  There is no forward, preface, appendix or anything that would help prove or disprove information in the book. This encyclopedia is not a reference book.  It is entertainment.