“This is just a collection of odd, scattered information.” So wrote Edith Martin in the preface to Do You Know Cornwall? in 1936 — and that modest disclaimer contained wisdom. What you can know about a place are rarely the things the guidebooks put on the first page.
Each location here is assembled from the odd corners, the strange facts, the words that don’t translate, the people who probably should be more famous, and the questions that make you think you knew somewhere and then realise you didn’t.
No two places are the same. Neither are these books.
Australia
Canada
England
New Zealand
Scotland
USA
Volumes are added when the material is good enough. If you have “chips and shavings” from somewhere worth knowing — facts that don’t appear in the Wikipedia entry, words only locals use, people who deserve to be remembered better - the feedback page is there.