Customer Reviews:
 As much as I hate to admit it December 23, 2007
John Marquette (California)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a librarian and professional fact-finder, and as a man who has had almanacs and (more recently) statistical abstracts available to him all his life, I have to say that any paper-based almanac is losing relevance with today's market.
I naturally have to commend the almanac for items such as the chronologies of national and world events, conversion tables, universal calendars, and so on, but if a person wants to find out about Nigeria or Venezuela and their relative oil exports, they're more likely to get better information from a source such as en.wikipedia.org. If wikipedia were not footnoted and referenced as carefully as it seems to be, I would not encourage its use - but it is. I really don't know who sits behind the editors' desks at the World Almanac and its competitors.
With apologies to anti-Kindle users who are reading this, we are getting very close to a point where people with the abiliity to access the internet can carry a hand-held device with them and gather facts. At the same time, they'll also be able to do on-the-fly comparisons more easily. To use my prior example, a curious person is about to be able to use a hand-held device to compare the number of barrels of oil exported per person in Nigeria and Venezuela, and then compare that data to each country's per capita income.
The tipping point is approaching. Keep buying almanacs for now, and think about how you use a mapping product instead of an atlas or map - and how quickly you made the transformation.
The only book that is a must own January 31, 2008
Mike (New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have bought this book it seems for the last 20 years or more. I get it as one of my gifts every Christmas. Just so much information is in here. I even found a lot of information on astronomy and the planets. Every topic I ever wanted to search for is in here. I love the history of all the presidents, crime stats, lots of facts on every country in the world, populations, and even how old famous people are. You can read it forever. You can learn a lot from this book.
An Important Addition to Any News Discussion! December 2, 2007
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Almanac 2008" begins with a synopsis of 2007's top ten new stories (eg. from Iraq to the Minneapolis bridge collapse), interesting changes of the last several decades (eg. fat consumption/capita in the U.S. increased from 37.7 lbs. in 1910 to 85.5 in 2005; the trade deficit/surplus went from +$92 billion in 1975 to -$817 billion in 2006), a brief news quiz (eg. "Which Republican contender paused during an NRA speech for a call from his wife?"), an election guide, key international issues for 2008 (about the same as 2007), etc. Then its oodles of fact-filled pages to add depth to most any news discussion - except those involving Hollywood stars' latest escapades or notable murders. "Almanac 2008" then ends with short statistical summaries of countless nations - some of which I didn't even know existed.
handy reference December 3, 2007
A. Psychiatrist
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a nice resource to identify historical information.
It's well worth the price to have it at your fingertips.
Addictive!! April 5, 2008
Southern Dad
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Beware! This book will be addictive once you pick it up. Just when you have lost yourself in an interesting subject,another comes up and there you go again. Great book. Buy it!!!!
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