Product Description

Why does the size of a space shuttle's fuel tanks have more to do with a horse's rump than rocket science? Is there a correlation between the humble pint and the capacity of the human bladder? And why is an old Wellington boot as important an instrument of spacial awareness as was ever invented? About the Size of It is a hugely entertaining history of traditional weights and measures that will make you look at your everyday world in a completely different way . . .

'A full and convincing account of why our well-tried and trusted traditional measures make human sense' Alexander McCall Smith

'His direct, engaging conversational prose is a delight to read... inspirational' Andrew Roberts

'Absolutely masterly. Lucid and wise and touching and absolutely right' Jilly Cooper

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112456 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author

Born in 1962 in Dagenham, Warwick Cairns now lives in Windsor with his wife and two daughters. After studying English and Psychology at Keele and English at Yale, he went on to drill wells on a Sioux reservation in Dakota and travel to Africa with Wilfred Thesiger, before settling on a career in advertising. This is his first book.

Customer Reviews

Informative and entertaining
This is a charming little book, funny as well as informative. Cairns knows exactly what he is talking about, the common man's experience of measures, as he has done ten years of opinion polling in Britain during its transition to the metric system.

The main fare of this book is anekdotes. Why American shoes are one barleycorn shorter than British ones. How Japanese farmers measure their lands in tatami mats. Why there are not hundred weights in one hundredweight (at least not in Britain). And so on. It's not urgent to know all this, but these make great stories to tell at parties.

Man is the measure
Man is the measure

If you have ever wondered why traditional weights and measures, apparently so irrational, seem, somehow or other, to be instinctively right, why a mile is a mile, why eight furlongs go to make one and three of them make a league or why, traditionally, shoes are measured, not as you would expect, in fractions of a foot but in some mysterious sizing system, this is the book for you.

In simple but elegant discourse, Warwick Cairns explains the logic of traditional weights and measures, demonstrates the universal principles underlying them and shows how they are inevitably right for those who employ them: we human beings.

Along the route, Cairns explores numerous byways: he tells us how to compose a good photograph, where the US and British systems vary (not greatly) and why they do and about a quirky measurement system for a particular bridge.

Cairns' deceptively informal style of writing carries his readers along so easily from one topic to the next so that they cannot resist turning to the next chapter to find out more.

This must surely be the best introduction to traditional weights and measures ever published. Its easy style and clarity of presentation make it an ideal gift for young people who, brought up in metric, have heard of traditional measures but are unaware of their inherent logic and beauty.

Entertaining and Educational!!
This is like having Warwick Cairns sitting in your kitchen with you with all your cups and jugs and tape measures out, and he is talking you through why they are the size they are, and making you giggle while you accept what he says! Do the experiments in his book, but try not to spit the water everywhere through laughing when you are trying to measure an American cup!! Also, do not go outside wearing husband's boots to test other theories when it is raining as socks will become unpleasantly wet and husband will not be impressed with wet boots next morning.