Jeffrey Bilhuber's Design Basics, by Jeffrey Bilhuber with Annette Tapert. Rizzoli, 208 pp., $39.95

I've just spent three hours re-arranging the wall-to-wall bookcase in my dining room, bringing the spines of all the books into alignment with the edges of the shelves. This strange maneuver-which involved ditching many yellowed photos of our long-dead Springer spaniel-was prompted by advice in a new book, Jeffrey Bilhuber's Design Basics . In Mr. Bilhuber's view, clearing away my tchotchkes and lining up my books would establish "a clear, clean, and edited straight line that brings an instant sense of order"-and damned if he wasn't right.

Jeffrey Bilhuber, for those unfamiliar with interior design, is at the top of the decorating heap these days, mentioned in the same breath as icons like Billy Baldwin and Albert Hadley by no less a person than Vogue editor Anna Wintour. He's the avatar of something called American Modernism, a style considered-at least in the design world-to be simple, clean and unpretentious. (Adjectives such as "simple" and "clean" are relative, of course; the gorgeous rooms pictured in this lavishly illustrated book are decorated to the max and-to the undiscerning eye of this average Manhattanite-bear the unmistakable imprint of gay guys with incredible taste.)

The thesis of Mr. Bilhuber's book is simple. "Dear reader," he says, "anyone can understand and use the concepts of great design." A lovely idea, all right, but it initially struck me as naïve-like thinking that anyone can be model-thin or grow up to be President. After all, haven't advances in genetics confirmed that a lot of what we can and can't be is hard-wired? And Lord knows recent events have shown that some people get to be President largely because their fathers were. As far as I can see, our body types, our taste in area rugs and our foreign policy all bear sad witness to the unevenness of life's playing field; to believe otherwise is just to ask for trouble.

Yet Jeffrey Bilhuber, God love him, remains an optimist. And amazingly enough, reading his book will almost make you believe him. In chapter after chapter, he exhorts us to trust our instincts: "We're all capable of making the perfect flower arrangement," he says, busily explaining exactly where to cut the stems of roses and what sort of vase to use. He bucks us up even while warning us not to put "predictable and boring" paired candlesticks at each end of the mantel: "You're better than that."

In the course of bolstering our self-esteem, Mr. Bilhuber provides relatively practical advice for spiffing up even the dreariest digs. Use grass cloth or textured wallpaper in the living room, and then you won't have to bother patching holes when you move the pictures around. Install wide baseboards to draw the eye down if you want your ceilings to look higher. Don't try to judge paint from a chip; buy small cans of several shades and cover sheets of poster board with each shade. Only when they've been propped against the wall for a couple of days can you begin to think about making an informed decision.

Even if you're not redecorating, Mr. Bilhuber is a lot of fun to read, as opinionated and sharp-tongued as a decorator on a reality-TV show. (According to a profile in The New York Times , an erstwhile associate is one of the Queer Eye stars.) Loose slipcovers, Mr. Bilhuber feels, have "the allure of a pajama party in a nursing home." Eclecticism stinks: "Why don't we just go home and put all of our furniture and objects in a Cuisinart, give it a good chop and whirl, and call it good design?" he snaps. And blowing the decorating budget on custom cabinets, Wolf ranges and Sub-Zero refrigerators is so haute bourgeois and dull. If you must freshen that utilitarian room, buy a can of paint and get some new drawer pulls at Gracious Home. Or choose the glossier option: "Why not just go out to dinner, for God's sake?"

Of course, the dirty little secret of this elegant book is that advice on a printed page can take you only so far. Really beautiful rooms take shape only with hands-on attention from somebody like Mr. Bilhuber-and from what I can gather, that's not going to happen to you or me. Why would he bother with the likes of us, after all, when Anna Wintour and W editor Patrick McCarthy are clamoring for his attention? Even if we got past the receptionist, we couldn't afford him. Though Mr. Bilhuber is discreet about the dollar value of his services, he does allude to clients "shelling out regular checks in the $5,000 to $25,000 range" in the course of redecorating. Other clues to the nature of his preferred clientele lie in throwaway sentences: At one point, he concedes that "perhaps you don't need seating for twelve in the dining room." And it's probably no accident that Mr. Bilhuber's publicity tour will take him to Bergdorf Goodman, Christie's and Neiman Marcus instead of Borders and Home Depot.

Mr. Bilhuber is so eager to help us that he ignores the flaws in the be-your-own-decorator reasoning, but it emerges unbidden when he describes the decorator-client relationship. "A good design professional seeks to sketch a portrait of the client's life that is cohesive and coherent," he says, adding that "learning to be a designer is learning about yourself." But isn't that the problem? Most people's lives are fragmented and incoherent, so even with all the optimism in the world, how can we create spaces that aren't? What if I know enough about myself to know that I have no clue what goes with what and no particular aptitude for figuring it out? Does that mean I can't have a living room as pretty as the ones in Mr. Bilhuber's book?

Probably, dear reader. But you and I can follow some of his advice, like turning the TV off and the music on, or putting flowers on the bedside table even if we're not expecting company. And it's funny, but I find the edited straight line of my bookshelves remarkably soothing, all by itself.

JoAnn Gutin is a science writer and editor in New York.

The old chestnut about what book you'd want on a desert island is outmoded now, what with most desert islands dedicated to reality programming. However, if you were to find yourself stranded in a motel room without cable, you could do a lot worse than Schott's Original Miscellany . A best-seller in Britain, this slender collection of random information is surprisingly entertaining, frequently useful and occasionally thought-provoking. As the compiler himself observes, "It is, perhaps, possible to live one's life without Schott's Original Miscellany , but it seems a curious and brave thing to attempt."

That's a slight overstatement, given the generous amount of standard-issue trivia here. If you want the names of Santa's reindeer, Snow White's dwarves, the Bond girls, the labors of Hercules or the seven wonders of the ancient world, then Mr. Schott's your man. He also includes those tired old collective nouns, most of which-a "murder" of crows, an "exaltation" of larks-we've seen before. (I'm not sure that all of them are even right; a "bench" doesn't refer just to bishops, as Mr. Schott implies, but to many elected officials.)

Still, the good, original stuff vastly outweighs the so-so. For me, the appeal of Mr. Schott's book lies in the practical information that I didn't know I needed but am delighted to have. For example, in a lifetime of buying lingerie, I've never understood how the ladies with the tape measure arrive at a bra size. It's complicated, and it's here. And Mr. Schott's explication of the intensely cryptic international laundry symbols is, all by itself, worth the price of the book: I can now understand my garment tags and operate my Braun iron without fear.

Even handier, Schott's provides European/U.S. conversion tables for shoe and dress sizes, a list I've just photocopied for my next Barneys sortie. Now I won't need to ask an arch salesperson to reveal whether a size six is a European 34 or 36-a question that evidently exposes me as someone with no business in the Jil Sander boutique, anyway. A little farther afield, if you, like me, have always wondered idly how Indian women keep their saris up, Mr. Schott provides simple line drawings-à la The Joy of Sex -illustrating how to wrap six yards of silk.

Practicality aside, the best tidbits in Schott's produce unexpected little epiphanies. The juiciest of these nuggets are historical-tiny, carefully selected footnotes that animate the past (and lead me to suspect that Mr. Schott has a degree from a good university). For instance, the leaders of the French Revolution ditched the Gregorian calendar and invented a system of 12 30-day months with names based on seasonal weather-fog, wind and heat. They eliminated weeks in favor of 10-day groupings called décades and made the five or six leftover days into holidays dedicated to such concepts as reason, virtue and revolution. The sheer hell-bent iconoclasm of it reminds you how well-behaved our own founders were.

Across the Channel, during the reign of George I, demonstrators had one hour to disperse after an official read them the newly passed Riot Act, which commanded "all persons … peaceably to depart to their habitations." It all seems so much more civilized than fire hoses, until you get to Mr. Schott's observation that anyone who didn't move along woke up with his head on a pike.

Other entries are somehow reassuring, revealing order in a world that seems more chaotic every day. I was glad to know, for instance, that there are precise guidelines for describing newly discovered terrain on the moon and planets. The names of scholars, artists and scientists go to large lunar craters; dunes on Venus get names of desert goddesses; features of Titan, a satellite of Saturn, receive names of "displaced ancient cultures." Meteorologists are equally systematic in their classification of tornadoes based on wind speed. An F4 (207 to 260 m.p.h.) is "Devastating," an F5 (261 to 318 m.p.h.) is "Incredible," and an F6 (greater than 319 m.p.h.) is left nameless, with the hopeful annotation "Theoretical; not expected on Earth."

But more intriguing than any mere fact in Schott's is the philosophical question raised by its popularity. In A.D. 2003, when anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can get the basics of any subject within 10 seconds, does the world need collections like this? From an informational standpoint, probably not. As an experiment, I Googled a few of Schott's entries and was instantly drowning in expertise. "Collective nouns" produced five Web sites devoted to the subject, including one in which you can coin collective nouns of your own. "French Revolutionary Calendar" brought me the particulars in Mr. Schott's book, plus thumbnail pictures of the multi-ethnic Mariannes-those women who embody La France. "Sari-wrapping" led me to diagrams much more detailed than Schott's , and a curry recipe besides.

So if information isn't the selling point of Schott's Original Miscellany , what is? Aesthetics comes into it a little bit: The volume is beautifully designed (by Mr. Schott himself), feels great in the hand and comes with one of those attached satin ribbons that serve as page markers. (Note to Mr. Schott for his next miscellany: Do those things have a special name?) But the real pleasure of the book lies in the process by which you come across the information. You don't seek, you stumble. The difference between this handsome volume and an Internet search is the difference between listening to a CD you've burned yourself and happening onto a really great radio station, or the difference between giving a party and going to one. Ben Schott has done all the work, and given it to us as a gift.

JoAnn Gutin is a science writer and editor in New York City.