The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders

The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders Book Description

Utterly compelling
Barbara Ann Kipfer has elevated the list to high art and bestselling pleasure. A foremost expert of classification, in "The Order of Things," she does for life what her previous books do for happiness and wisdom--organize it in a way that is brilliantly conceived.
The "The Order of Things" is practical, entertaining, eclectic, and impossible to put down. Beginning with Earth--Smog Alert States, Rain Forest Layers, Coal Sizes-- and ending with General Knowledge and Philosophy (the "I Ching's" 64 "chapters," Ludwig Wittgenstein's four-step Method of Overcoming Puzzlement), it is a 14-chapter taxonomy of the world as we know it:
- The Seven Hills of Rome, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Seven Dwarfs--check.
- The belt degrees of karate and judo, weight classes of professional and amateur boxing, flower names of the golf holes at Augusta--check.
- The hierarchy of the FBI, publication order of Shakespeare's plays, cuts of beef, Freud's divisions of the human psyche, order of rank in world armies and navies, Jupiter's satellites, ships' bells, traditional and modern wine measures, blood-pressure levels, fastest animals--check.
A completely indispensable reference--check.

An eclectic, surprising, and utterly entertaining compendium, "The Order of Things" compiles a very astonishing diversity of information-the natural, the social, the mathematical, the mystical-into hundreds of charts, systems, lists, and hierarchies. From Barbara Ann Kipfer, who mastered the art of the list with her bestselling "14,000 Things to Be Happy About," this is a book for browsing, for research, and for the sheer pleasure of learning new things.

Barbara Ann Kipfer has contributed to The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders as an author. Dr. Barbara Ann Kipfer is a lexicographer and reviser of "Roget's International Thesaurus", as well as author of "14,000 Things to Be Happy About".

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