Title:

The Theory of Everything Else

Author:

Dan Schreiber

Category:

Non-fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

October 8, 2023

he subtitle for this book is A Voyage Into the World of the Weird. This book is a quick read, each chapter covers various phenomena. Some of these chapters provide interesting little-known facts about events (such as the sinking of the Titanic) or people (the Beatles). But too many chapters are devoted to utter nonsense. For example, Chapter 7 is called Novak Djokovic and the Power of Alien Pyramid Energy. This chapter informs us that Mr. Djokovic, who is a top ranked tennis player, believes that triangular-shaped mountains in Bosnia are actually 12,000 year old pyramids constructed by an unknown civilization. He believes that by sitting on top of these mountains, Mr. Djokovic can channel cosmic energy that will recharge him before his next tennis bout.

Just because someone is a famous athlete, musician or political figure doesn't lend any extra credence to their ridiculous beliefs. So the fact that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, believe in encounters with extra-terresterials doesn't mean his claims should carry any more weight than the strange beliefs espoused by your next door neighbor. There are simply too many chapters wasted on silliness like this. Siegfried & Roy were a couple of magicians who performed an act in Las Vegas with live tigers. In one performance, one of the tigers bit Roy in the neck and dragged him off of the stage. Roy later claimed that the tiger was actually trying to save his life! Roy suffered from high blood pressure, and the tiger sensed that Roy's blood pressure was at a dangerous level, so the tiger bit him to alleviate the pressure.

I don't understand why the author felt that it was necessary to include so much idiocy in his book. Ghosts that haunt airplanes. Composers and authors who create new material from beyond the grave by speaking through a medium at a séance or a Ouija board. The Titanic sunk because too many time travelers came back from the future to witness the fatal voyage, and their combined weight (the weight of an estimated 5 and a half million time travelers) was so great that the great ship was driven beneath the waves.

Including such foolishness obscured the parts of the book that are actually interesting. For example, on the night of the Titanic's sinking, the weather conditions conspired to create what is called "superior mirages" - layers of cold and warm air make illusions, distorting what humans can see - which may have contributed to the iceberg being invisible to the helmsman until too late. There was a strong solar flare on April 14, 1912 which might have screwed with the Titanic's compass, sending it on a more northerly route than planned - and thus right into a collision course with the iceberg.

There is an interesting chapter about the Apollo astronauts. An interesting story about the Edmund Halley's efforts to get the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica. Why did Schreiber clutter up his book with the stupid claims of Uri Geller or David Copperfield? It cannot be that the author ran out of interesting material - I am sure that there is an inexhaustible store of amazing coincides and weird facts that could fill volumes. But the author instead chose to fill more than half of his book with such dubious claims such as Jesus died in Japan when he was 106 years old (it was his brother that died on the cross). 20,000 tourists visit Shingo Japan each year to see Jesus' grave.

It is because so much of the book is ridiculous that I was disappointed. There is too much chaff in the book, it overwhelms the kernels of interest. I don't recommend this book.