Here’s proof positive that you don’t have to be obsessed with a podcast to enjoy the spinoff book. Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlsedt’s 99% Invisible has been around for ten years, but I had never heard of it. This very enjoyable book (one of my customers described it as upscale bathroom reading) looks at everything from left turns to squirrels to uncomfortable benches to brick veneers. Alas, it’s not an urban planning podcast – this is just the first topic they decided to cover. Mars’s show reminds me a bit of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, as hosted by Rod Serling. As an aside, the publisher chose to give a different ISBN inventory code to the signed (well, initialed) edition, even putting it on the bellyband. Sometimes we have a different ordering ISBN, but the book itself has the same identifying code, to make reordering easier when the signed copies run out. But in this case, the sales are separate, maybe not on national bestseller lists, but on the Edelweiss industry peer sharing site. Some stores (like Boswell) override to the unsigned ISBN, but other stores clearly don’t. But to you, that’s invisible!
— Daniel Goldin
