That is all

Everyone weary of the end-of-the-world hoopla over the Mayan prediction for the year 2012 will find a welcome antidote in this latest faux reference guide from noted wag and self-professed expert on everything Hodgman. Continuing where The Daily Show regular left off in the best-selling More Information than You Require (2009) even the page numbers start a digit after the last volume Hodgman provides his customary collection of false facts and eccentric lists, albeit this time with an apocalyptic twist. Appearing at the top of each page, almanac style, is a daily calendar of predicted international incidents many involving monstrous Lovecraftian Old Ones that starts December 21, 2011, and ends a year later, on the Mayan calendar's final day, when Hodgman confidently pronounces the world will split in half. As for the rest of the volume's barrage of offbeat analyses and eclectic lists, from a guide to making wine in a toilet to explaining why Oprah Winfrey has an earth evacuation plan, it would be generous to suggest they have much in common beyond their source in Hodgman's own endearingly surreal imagination.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist

Areas of My Expertise (2005), this odd little volume delights in beingwell, if not wrong, then bizarrely inventive, and rock-solid in the assuredness of the justice of his cause. Take this specimen, riffing on the old saw "You don't have to be crazy, but it helps" (which Hodgman willfully misquotes to serve his murky purposes): "Well, guess what? The guy who made up that slogan probably made a million dollars, because it was very popular, and he printed it on food during the Great Depression." Let us count the ways in which that is wrong--and also very funny. Which is entirely the point: Hodgman, a sometime colleague, aims to outdo Jon Stewart's America and Earth book empire with sheer outr exuberance, and he succeeds at every step. Exhibit A: Everyone wants to be rich in America, right? Well, counsels Hodgman, that won't happen, because "the billionaires who actually control the world would not allow it." But what's to stop you from believing you're filthy rich, and who's to say you're not? That's the glory of modern life--and because we live in a land of opportunity, strange and unpredictable things happen, which is just the reason, Hodgman asserts, that Wilt Chamberlain had to hire a "special sex butler." Bad math, bad facts--it all adds up to what Jean-Paul Sartre would have called bad faith. But Sartre's dead, and it's Hodgman's world--and besides, Sartre never wrote half as convincingly about the impending apocalypse that will be Ragnarok. Just the sort of book to keep by your bed--a bundle of knowing laughs, though at whom is ever the question at hand.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.