This book’s predecessor – Does Anything Eat Wasps? – by New Scientist editors of the weekly magazine New Scientist was a surprise publishing sensation of the 2005 holiday season. Both are collections of New Scientist's ‘Last Word’ weekly column, with questions posed by and answered by readers. This was a gift book.

So what types of questions are asked? This book’s back cover lists a few to grab your attention:

• What time is it at the North Pole?
• What’s the chemical formula for a human being?
• Why do boomerangs come back?
• Why do flying fish fly?
• Do the living really outnumber the dead?
• Why does lightning fork?
• Why does the end of a whip crack?

The book’s back cover also adds: “Everyone has at one time or another thought up odd questions that are strange, intriguing, maybe even impossible to answer. Making your morning omelet, perhaps you’ve wondered why most eggs are egg shaped. Or maybe, the last time you walked on the beach you felt compelled to ask why the sea is salty. Watching Polly sit on her perch, have you ever marveled at how she stays there – even when she’s asleep? Well, the readers of New Scientist’s wildly popular, long-running column ‘The Last Word’ thought of these questions, too, and weren’t afraid to ask them. Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? is a brilliant collection of questions and answers for everyone who enjoyed the international, runaway bestseller Does Anything Eat Wasps? Guaranteed to amaze, inform, and delight with topics such as the human body, plants and animals, weird weather, and our wacky world, it’ll stump you, enlighten you, entertain and amuse you.”

Readers of the New Scientist weekly are either scientists or non-scientists interested in a science magazine that covers a lot of topics, many in brief form but each issue also has a few feature articles of a few pages. New Scientist has a circulation approaching 160,000 and a worldwide readership of more than half a million, placing it among the most popular of all popular-science magazines. The Last Word column is always on the very last page of each issue. This column has answers (one or more) from a previous issue’s Last Word plus a new question for readers to answer. The editors decide which answer(s) to include in a later issue. This book sometimes offers more than one answer to a question, especially when some of them aren’t in agreement. So both information and humor can be found in the answers. The book covers the following nine topics: (1) Our Bodies, (2) Feeling OK? (3) Plants and Animals, (4) Food and Drink, (5) Domestic Science, (6) Our Planet, Our Universe, (7) Weird Weather, (8) Troublesome Transport, and (9) Best of the Rest.

This book was a birthday gift and I’ve found it most enjoyable to read a little (1-3 topics) each day, often thinking up my own answer before reading the book’s answer or answers. I found this to be a fun way to peruse this unusual, informative and amusing book by the New Scientist editors.