I mentioned it over the summer, but early last month a book was released by a sort-of, barely acquiantance of mine (we played pub trivia together at least twice and against each other a few times). I bought it shortly after it came out, and I read it over the course of the past couple of days. It's a fantastic book for all trivia geeks; it would also be an interesting read, I think, for anyone who has a sense of what a college mentor of mine used to call "academic community"--the idea that there are other people out there who are interested in big ideas, in little facts, and especially in the connection between those two things. Bob never had academic community, per se, but as much as anything the book is about how he found (through a game show, of all things) that he was interested in those things, that other people were as well, and that that commonality was more important than differences in education, age, geography, profession, etc. If any of that sounds remotely worthwhile to you, then I suggest picking up Prisoner of Trebekistan. Anyway, it's a quick read.

I certainly recommend it for a more general audience than the last book I read, Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday. It's a history of the 1920s, which might sound good to the general audience, until I add that it was written in 1931. I enjoyed it, but definitely more of a history geek thing.