Pocket Ref
ISBN:9781885071330 read summary

If you're techno, mechanical, or scientific, this amazing book of facts could make your head explode.

You might not actually use the book for anything.

But, it's an amazing and fun collection of minutiae. An awesome novelty gift for the right person, including possibly yourself.

This is a small reference manual with tons of charts, formulas and other information. There are several of these little pocket reference books, so be sure to look over the table of contents and get the one that is best for you. I have been using one of Thomas Glover's reference books for over 15 years now. I wouldn't be without it!!! Highly recommend.

I have the newest edition (3rd Edition, 6th Printing: April 2003).

POCKET REF is a fun little book that could keep a youngster (and plenty of adults!) busy for hours. It offers hundreds of pages on interesting and sometimes obscure topics, from plumbing to weather, and from chemistry to first aid. It might also be handy for on-the-job use (by engineers and others needing access to technical data), although that latter application may be tempered somewhat by the typos. I cannot speak to whether numbers are for the most part correct, but the high incidence of grammatical typos, including missing letters, is not confidence-inspiring. The Knots & Bends section is particularly egregious. There are also many instances of question marks apparently used as placeholders, presumably for information to be inserted prior to publication; these give the book an unfinished feel (see pp.66,290,291).

I live in Colorado and evidently so does the publisher. I will transmit my findings in hopes of cleaning up a possible 4th Edition.

When you do not have access to the World Wide Web for reference data, you are going to wish you had this Swiss Army knife of information. Even if you have access to the web, this book has some advantage over the WWW in the quickness in finding the info, and also completeness of the info.

This is a bizarre little book. The bookstore owner said he would pick it up and end up spending hours looking at content. I've been doing the same. As dry as the content is, it has a strong entertainment value.

I wished I had had this when I was between 10 and 16, I wanted access to this kind of information back then. If you have a kid curious about all kinds of engineering, this is the cheapest way to expose lots of useful knowledge to them.

Love this little book.

Absolutely wonderful. I'm not certain how I've survived so long without it. I'd recommend that everyone have at least one copy. It's small, light, and full of helpful content. It's one of my best purchases ever.