I'm never quite sure what to think when I see a book that's called "The (Something-Somthing) Bible". Is it completely outdated with questionable relevance to any present-day application?
Or what should I think when a respected colleague tells me to look something up in this or that reference book because it's "The Bible of....(insert specialty here)" .... Is it a compendium of poorly documented, one-off case reports about
My examples above are simply what came up in the first page when I searched "the bible" on amazon and then clicked on a bunch of different subtopics (excluding religion and history, and any book that was referencing some other bible....)
Just for fun...try the same experiment...with "the torah" or "the quran/koran"....just on my brief overview...it's pretty much 100% translations of the original or references to the original..... there's definitely no "Marijuana Grower's Koran" or "Torah of Halal Cooking". Unfortunate really.
Well, ignoring the situation of a colleague suggesting a legitimate book with really poor selling skills... what should we do with this sub-genre of
Additionally, the topics are generally kinda dodgy things to be experts in anyways.... marijuana growing, herbal medicines, fur trapping (for fucks sake... from the amazon page this is a 2nd or 3rd edition even). Seems like mostly areas where there's really crappy science at best, and "expert opinion" and dogma at worst.....just the kind of specialties where a bible would come in handy.
Well, for what it's worth, there are 2 (maybe 3...) books in my home with the word bible in the title. One (or 2) actual bibles that are just good to have around (when you need a doorstop, or to press a flower, etc).....and this
I'm actually quite looking forward to reading it with my daughter when she's old enough. Since it consists of very accurate illustrations of stories from the Old Testament...that'll probably be in 20 or 25 years....
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