The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia Paperback – November 10, 2009

I like the style better than some of the content, but it was incredible to see all the graphs, colors and pictures used to represent information. There is quite a bit of interesting information as well. I just didn’t necessarily agree with the slant sometimes.

The world of data and its visual representations makes up a larger part of newspapers, magazines, and TV. Here, information about a wide range of topics is presented. There are one and two page summaries about global warming, carbon intensity, charities, health, cancer, geography, entertainment/movies, art, religion, and other subjects. Lots of the information are topics most readers have a general understanding of but also are topics about which one may not recall specific numbers. A very good two page visual summary is for the carbon dioxide cycle (p. 102/103). Cancer risks are another topic represented by a graphic made out of words (p. 154/155). Historical matters, including 20th Century Death causes is visually powerful, and highly informative (p. 120/121). At the UN and at the National Academy of Sciences people are still estimating what types of government programs are most beneficial for promoting the quality of life, reducing poverty, and avoiding the loss of life. This utilitarian debate changes as technology advances, yet we may see very similar charts about 21st survival and demographics as in the 20th century, given current trends about water shortages, droughts, war, poverty, and drug use. US economics are on trend towards being 20% of world GDP (compared with today's US GDP at 25% of the world economy). American charities will experience new limits in life-saving and life-improving missions. The era of Chinese charities may be a new trend, or they could be taking a more mercantile and finance-oriented road, exchanging goods and services usually only in return for raw materials and land rights.

I expected to be blown away by Candless's visualizations, but they failed to impress. The book remains an enjoyable read as you're constantly encountering new ways of looking at information and the visualizations are quite stunning. However, many of the visualizations are built more for aesthetic appeal than clarity, which I was disappointed by.

Love this book, bought it for several friends

I bought this after watching a TedTalk by the author because I'm into data visualization (both professionally and for school). While this book has pretty graphics, and a bit of interest from a "what might graphs options look like beyond standard graphs" perspective, that's about it. On one page it just shows digital images of different types of facial hair that contain no other information except what dictators had it, years they were alive, and how many people killed. It would have been the exact same if they just had a picture of the person. Exact Same. Similarly, there is a page that has an icon for food, the name of the food item, and then below the icon is a number of calories. On one page is a bunch of colored circles that are supposed to represent the reasons for divorce - except none of the reasons are listed. Just a bunch of circles. So none of these really give me much "insightful" information.Some graphs show insightful information (like the Snake Oil one) that was highlighted in the author's tedtalk. Some are outdated as expected, but still give you ideas on the possibilities on how to display information. But that's only if you know what to call some of these graphs, because you aren't going to see them in any typical data visualization package. Or maybe some graphic designer put them together - that seems more likely. So yea - pretty book. From a practical "how to else you can display your data" perspective not particularly helpful.

If you like cool facts, fascinating statistics on myriad topics, trivia, and one-of-a-kind books, you should definitely check this out. This book is AMAZING. It is jammed full of interesting and colorful charts, graphs, info-graphics, and similar things. There are so many topics, and a lot of them are very interesting and relevant to everyday life and the things people like to talk about. The author hones in on the compelling data, not just junk facts. This is probably one of the best "fun" books I have ever purchased.One word of warning: There are a few graphs dealing with adult themes, and at least one of them contains info-graphic style depictions of sexual organs. I didn't see anything raunchy; but if you are sensitive you should take note. As a conservative Christian, I didn't feel that the contents would be inappropriate for a high school or college library; but it might earn a PG rating.There is so much to see and process in this book that I have not finished it yet. But the moment I took it out of the Amazon box, I could hardly put it down. Seriously, I stood there and perused the whole book on the spot.

I am very disappointed in this book. It has lovely colorful graphics, but they're often poorly labeled (or not labeled at all) so it's impossible to understand what's presented. And there are no references for the "facts" portrayed. In at least two cases I know the presented material to be incorrect or formerly correct but more recently (and I don't mean breaking-news "recently," but known for the last five or more years) found to be wrong.If you want it simply for graphic art appeal, it may satisfy you; however some of the designs wouldn't work even if the were comprehensible labels and good sources as there's simply no room within or around the shapes to accommodate carrying the information that would be needed.It's also worth noting that some of the graphs (e.g., ones on favorite rock bands) appear to show information from the UK's population and not the USA's.

I am interested in visual representations that leave an impact. This is a classic book worth having for people who need to know different ways to visually communicate complex information.