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Homework for Grown-ups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot |  | Authors: E. Foley, B. Coates
Publisher: Broadway
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $9.60
as of 11/23/2009 05:37 CST details
You Save: $10.39 (52%)
New (27) Used (9) from $9.19
Seller: SIG Net
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 16122
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0767932382
Dewey Decimal Number: 032.02
EAN: 9780767932387
ASIN: 0767932382
Publication Date: August 11, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A nostalgic compendium of essential knowledge that can help you show the world that you’re smarter than a ten-year-old after all!
Have you ever stared blankly at your kids when they’ve asked why the sky is blue? Or clumsily changed the subject when they’ve wanted to know why the wind blows? If you’re done with school, it’s likely you’re also done knowing the difference between an isosceles and equilateral triangle, and you probably leave participles dangling all over the place. Well, not anymore! Thanks to professional know-it-alls Foley and Coates, you can now gain back your self-respect and actually show those kids a thing or two as you tell it to them straight (and not make it up from fragments of facts you kind of remember).
Packed with all the basic facts that have managed to free-fall from our heads over the years, Homework for Grown-ups is the ultimate grammar school refresher course in book form. In fact, there’s even a quiz at the end of each chapter to ensure you’ve been paying attention! Written in the light, engaging style of a favorite teacher and featuring lessons in English, math, history, science, geography, art, and even home economics and recess, this fun and handy guide will help you stop hemming and hawing and start speaking with a lot more authority—and a little less shame.
E. FOLEY and B. COATES are editors at Vintage who both live in London.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
 A Treasure of Information October 29, 2009
Kelly McCants (Frisco, TX)
This book is a synopsis of every basic school subject. It's to-the-point, concise, and doesn't waste words. This book presents the essentials of the subjects you studied (or should have studied!) in school with rapid fire succession. Fantastic for a review of those things you remember learning about at some point along the way.
A couple tidbits gave me pause and made me question the complete accuracy of all the information. For example, the book states Benjamin Franklin authored the Declaration of Independence. This is not entirely the story; he helped Adams and Jefferson refine it after Jefferson authored it. This gives me only a small pause, however; on the whole the book is quite useful. I wouldn't discard it based on these small things.
This book would be a fun gift to those "information junkie" friends and family that everyone has. It's quite fun.
 Awesome Grab for Common Knowledge we forget October 6, 2009
Jessica Kennedy (Waynesboro, PA United States)
I saw this at Borders. Loved it and bought it on Amazon.
It's a perfect collection of knowledge we've learned but have mostly forgotten about.
I love trivia so this book helps me remember those random facts not everyone remembers.
I really like the format used in the book. I like the humor behind it as well.
The quizzes at the end of each chapter was surprising! I didn't want to be tested on the knowledge! But I guess that's the whole point! I like to skip to the quiz first to see what I already think I know. It's not as easy as you'd think!
I will keep this on my shelf and possibly in the bathroom for some light reading. :)
Really Does Help You Relearn What You Forgot September 22, 2009
Danielle Lane (Horseshoe, North Carolina)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is my new bathroom reader. In fact every time I leave that little room with no windows I feel like I've regained a little of what was lost, you know those things you learned in high school that have slowly, or rapidly in my case, trickled out of your head.
Do you know how a light bulb works? I learned it in eighth grade science (okay that was junior high school) and it's something I promptly forgot, remembered only until I passed Mr. Thompson's test.
How about history's great military victories and defeats? How about how to figure out the area of a rectangle or a triangle? How about Hamlet, do you remember any of that? This little book, which reprises your high school education in 351 pages (answers included) is simply a joy to own. I read a few paragraphs every day, learn, or should I say relearn, a little every day. Jeez, I used to be smart.
 Possibly useful little volume September 22, 2009
pleureur.
I must confess that I am glad that I got this book for free. I am not certain that I would pay for it. That being said, it's a useful little volume, with some basic information all in one place -- summaries of history, religion, science, including answers to some of those little questions kids tend to ask such as "why is the sky blue?" that adults usually feel woefully unable to answer. Because the book is so short, I am not sure it would occur to me to look up the answer here, even if the information did turn out to be included.
I felt it was unfortunate the "homework" theme extended to a pop quiz at the end of each section -- like most pop quizzes, it didn't highlight the most important information, but rather small details. Also, some of the questions did not appear to have the answer given in the text (such as Ch 7, question 21 about the meaning of "jihad").
The writing is fairly neutral, and not suffused with the sort of superior or skeptical judgments of some other one volume tomes I have read. All in all, potentially useful, but make use of either the "look inside" feature or flipping through a physical book in hand, to see if it is what you expect.
 I promptly forgot most of what I just "learned" September 22, 2009
Stanley Cup (Holly Springs, NC)
I was really excited about this book when I saw the title and description, and the premise was a great idea. When the book arrived, I thought it looked as though it would be a "heavy" read, and put it away for a week or so until I had more time to devote to it. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got through the book, although I will admit I did skip a lot of the quizzes at the end of each chapter after I became a bit put off by the fact that some of the questions that were in the quizzes were not covered in the chapter that was supposed to cover said information. It reminded me of teachers in school who gave quizzes to students on material they did not teach. Adding to my disappointment was the fact that I had to keep flipping to the back of the book in order to see if I had "aced" my test or not. The answers needed to me more easily accessible, and burying them at the end of the book was not where I had hoped to find them.
The book is divided in to chapters that cover English, math, history, religion, home economics, science, geography, art, and classics. What became a disappointment to me throughout the book was the material that the authors decided to cover, or more importantly, what they decided NOT to cover. It was a little surprising to me that they spent no time on World War 2, save the seven lines they devoted to the Battle of Britain and 8 lines of text they devoted to Pearl Harbor they listed as being important in their Top 13 battles list that began in 490 BC. There was no Battle at Normandy or mention of the dropping of the atomic bomb in Nagasaksi or Hiroshima and I don't know how you can cover a history chapter and make no mention of these events. The chapter also skipped around chronologically, which was mildly annoying. The grammar section was pretty basic, as was the home ec section. Of the three recipes they covered, one was for pineapple upside down cake. Huh? I don't know how many people learned to make this in high school, and I am not so sure that that many adults are in search of that recipe either. The biology and chemistry sections were interesting, but I could not tell you one thing that I read in that section that I retained 2 days later, other than the information I have always retained. It serves as a good reference, but I do not think I "learned" a thing because learning involves retaining the information, and I certainly did none of that. The periodic table is nice to have if you need to check something quickly, but the rest of the chapter that included physics, chemistry, and biology is a blur. The religion section was interesting, and a lot of the information presented was new to me. (Public schools rarely go there!)
The "English Literature" section is even shorter than a Cliff's Notes special, and I found that information pretty much useless. They summed up "Pride and Prejudice" with a two sentence write up that said, "(1813) by Jane Austen--Sassy woman with nightmare family meets snobby rich boy. After various intrigues everyone ends up married". Jane Austen must be turning in her grave. It makes Cliff's Notes look like classic prose next to what they had to offer. Why even bother? The Art section had a nice glossary of terms related to types of painting, but just like art taught in school, it pulled the short straw and maxed out at a whopping 14 pages.
All in all, I was not all that excited about the book when I finished reading it, and to be honest, if I really needed to look up information on fossil fuels or Albert Einstein, I would Google it where I was bound to find far more information, not search this book for the answers. The back jacket of the book bills this as "A nostalgic compendium of essential knowledge that can help you show the world that you're smarter than a 10 year old after all!" I would not classify chiaroscuro painting "essential", and I certainly am not smarter than a 10- year old for reading this. It's back to school for me.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
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