The editor and cofounder of the science-humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), Abrahams holds an annual IG Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University. His book contains many examples of research called "breakthroughs" including: The happiness of clams, the physics professor who determined that toast does indeed fall buttered side down, and the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama which won the prize in mathematics for devising a formula to determine how many Alabamans will go to Hell.

The first edition quickly became a classic among Unix system administrators. Garfinkel, a New England freelance, and his colleagues have produced a 1,000-page book for techies and those seriously interested in computer security.

You won't take your mirror for granted after reading Pendergrast's book. He maintains that mirrors are the first technology for contemplation of self and that its invention is arguably as important as that of the wheel. He describes the 2,500-year history of the mirror including the bloodthirsty smoking gods of the Toltecs to the mirrored rooms of wealthy Romans created for their orgies to the mirror's key role in the use and understanding of light.

From Hindu mythology to Aztec sacrifices, butterflies have served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation. Even during World War II, children in a Polish death camp scratched hundreds of butterflies onto the walls of their barracks. But as Sharman Apt Russell, a teacher of writing at Western New Mexico University and at Antioch University in Los Angeles, writes in her book, butterflies are above all objects of obsession.