''Joined-Up Thinking'' is the first book by writer and artist

Stevyn Colgan Stevyn Colgan (born 11 August 1961) is a British writer, artist and speaker. Colgan was a police officer in London 1980–2010. He was then a researcher and scriptwriter for the BBC TV series QI and the regular QI Annuals, and for QI's BBC ...

. It is based loosely upon the idea of

Six Degrees of Separation Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is al ...

first put forward by

Frigyes Karinthy Frigyes Karinthy (; 25 June 1887 – 29 August 1938) was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the six degrees of separation concept, in his 1929 short story, ''Chains'' (''Láncszemek'' ...

and later explored by

Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist known for his controversial Milgram experiment, experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale University, Yale.Blass, T ...

and

Richard Wiseman Richard John Wiseman (born 16 September 1966) is a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. He has written several psychology books. He has given keynote addresses to The Roy ...

, in that everything and everyone in the world can be connected in some way. The book takes a light-hearted and humorous series of 'cyclic journeys through the land of trivia'. What marks the book as different from previous books of trivia is that each chapter or 'Round' takes the reader along a chain of interconnected facts ending, ultimately, back at the first fact in the chain. There are 30 of these 'journeys' in the book which are then all linked together in 'The Great Big Joined-Up Index' where Colgan shows the interconnectedness between facts in different Rounds.

Publication history

First published by Macmillan in Britain on 3 October 2008. The book received favourable comments from both

Stephen Fry Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He came to prominence as a member of the comic act Fry and Laurie alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in ''A Bit of ...

and John Mitchinson of Quite Interesting Ltd, co-author (with John Lloyd) of

The Book of General Ignorance ''The Book of General Ignorance'' is the first in a series of books based on the final round in the intellectual British panel game '' QI'', written by series-creator John Lloyd and head-researcher John Mitchinson,

. "I found myself strangely fascinated and somewhat dizzy. Most impressive" - Stephen Fry. "The book that nails that odd, slightly unnerving feeling that everything really is connected" - John Mitchinson. The paperback edition was released on 18 September 2009.

Critical reception

Response to the book has been positive to date. 'This is not a stocking filler - this is a real book. Buy several copies and keep one' - ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

'' 'He connects each piece of his trivia puzzle in a concise, chatty, easy to follow, even logical, manner. This free-flowing style does not, thankfully, lend itself to pause and evaluation, but does allow for a great deal of chuckling and chin-stroking. This is the sort of book that you will read and then spend the next month or so scratching your head and wondering just how it is, exactly, you know that avocados are poisonous, that indigo is really just a shade of violet, or that Wilma Flintstone had two maiden names, Pebble or Slaghoople, depending on which episode you watched, or that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair owns a telephone that resembles a Harley-Davidson. He is the master of the trivial, the collector and cataloguer of the forgotten and inane - but no matter how worthless and unnecessary the information, Colgan has the knack of making it all sound intensely fascinating' - ''

New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand ...

'' Steve Scott (12 May 2009
"When one thing leads to another"
''New Zealand Herald''. Retrieved 2014-01-21.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Stevyn Colgan's Web site

The Unbearable oddness of Stevyn Blog

The Joined-Up Thinkers' Network
2008 non-fiction books British books