Washoe County Library System

Praised as the "bestest travel guide ever" (Mary Roach) and "a joy to read and reread" (Neil Gaiman), Atlas Obscura is a phenomenon of travel books: "Odds are you won't get past three pages without being amazed" (San Francisco Chronicle). It rocketed to the top of bestseller lists and has over 626,000 copies in print since its publication in late 2016. Now the best gets better and the weirdest gets weirder with this completely revised and updated...

The world can be a pretty wacky place! Kids will have a blast exploring just HOW wacky in the first book in the wildly popular Weird But True series, full of 350 surprising and amazing facts. Topics include science, space, weather, geography, food, pop culture, and just about everything else under the sun, presented with fascinating photos and illustrations. This quirky little reference is so much fun, kids forget they're learning.

"Military intelligence analyst and Harvard Law student Tyler Vigen illustrates the golden rule that "correlation does not equal causation" through hilarious graphs inspired by his viral website. Is there a correlation between Nick Cage films and swimming pool accidents? What about beef consumption and people getting struck by lightning? Absolutely not. But that hasn't stopped millions of people from going to tylervigen.com and asking, "Wait, what?"...

Presents a series of miscellaneous and unusual facts about such topics as music, fashion, marriage, nature, sports, and food.

"The blockbuster kid-favorite series Weird But True! is back with another annual volume of new, true, mind-blowing oddities for 2024 ... and beyond! Discover Earth’s strangest natural wonders, animals, festivals, ancient architecture, news, and more in this annual compendium of everything Weird But True! fans love ... and then some. Readers will journey across the seven continents, dive into the ocean, and even blast off into space to discover...

"Combining fact, fiction, and hands-on activities, Frightlopedia is an illustrated A-Z collection of some of the world’s most frightening places, scariest stories, and gruesomest creatures, both real and imagined. Discover Borneo’s Gomantong Cave, where literally millions of bats, cockroaches, spiders, and rats coexist—in pitch darkness. Learn about mythical creatures like the Mongolian Death Worm—and scarily real ones like killer bees, which...

"What's so weird about U.S. presidents? Plenty! Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was a great wrestler? That Ulysses S. Grant got a speeding ticket riding his horse--twice! Or that Benjamin Harrison was afraid of electricity? And let's not forget that President McKinley had a pet parrot that whistled 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' duets with him! In this new single-subject Weird But True book, you'll have a blast learning that there's a lot of substance--and...

"From the host of the ArtCurious podcast, this book looks at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. It demonstrates why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore"--

Growing up with fellow sideshow performers at an oddities museum, three orphans with unusual superhuman abilities are joined by a fourth child, a knife-thrower, with whom they search for the museum's stolen Amazonian shrunken head.