A review by cashmama1
Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up by William Poundstone

3.0

I really liked this book, but, man, it revealed to me how little I know! Can you name 6 of your elected state representatives? Can you identify Turkey on a map? Do you know who Ted Williams was? It talks about how general knowledge has little to do with what you learned in schools, something to do with your curiosity about life, and lots to do with average income correlating to that knowledge. The bulk of the book is about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is basically that the people who have the least knowledge think they have the most. The most interesting statistic I read, though, was that happiness maxes out around the $75000 salary--people who made more were not more happy than those who made that much. It also reveals that grammar and spelling aren't too important a determining factor in income levels, but pronunciation is. Also, the more sports trivia you know, the wealthier you tend to be. Lots of interesting little tidbits. I wish it had a larger section devoted to how to become more culturally literate (the main advice was to stop using Facebook as your main news source and stop wasting time on the internet), but it was still a good read.