ary29 Bologna, Italy

A Dominican family saga from the island to New Jersey and back. People and events in Dominican history explained in terms of sci-fi and fantasy - one for all, Trujillo as Sauron. A mixture of English and Spanish that goes beyond Spanglish. It's one of the strangest books I have ever read, but I enjoyed reading it very much!

Although the title recalls "Notes from a Small Island", this is not a Bryson's travelogue across the US. It's a collection of his weekly columns for a British newspaper while he was residing in New Hampshire in late 1990s, mostly about comparing life in the US vs in UK. You have to remind that while reading - when he writes "you people" he means Britons - otherwise it can get quite confusing. Interesting and funny!

Most of what Anderson writes makes sense, although there are some doubtful passages - mainly, figures that come out of nowhere, either because the data source is not clearly mentioned or because they have been tampered with (see note 20 on the "compared" sales of Wal-Mart vs Rhapsody).
My advice: take the concepts, and forget the numbers!

Although this booklet was first published over 50 years ago - and the income or demographic figures in the examples do show their age - its explanation of how to look at statistics is still valid. I totally concur in the foreword: professional statisticians deplore the misuse of statistics as heartily as anyone alive. Count me in, I'm one of them.