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The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
For his follow-up to The Year of Living Biblically, journalist A. J. Jacobs decides to read through all 32 volumes of the Enclypaedia Brittanica—and write about it. Fun and laugh-out-loud funny.
About the Book
Early in his career, A.J. Jacobs put his Ivy League education to work at Entertainment Weekly. He emerged five years later knowing which stars have fake boobs, which stars have toupees, which have both, and not much else. This realization led Jacobs on a life-changing quest: to read the entire contents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 33,000 pages, all 44 million words.
The mission began in October 2002, with the word “a-ak”. The word launches hilarious misadventures through 32 volumes, as Jacobs accumulates useful and less-so knowledge, and along the way finds a deep connection with his father, examines the nature of knowledge vs. intelligence, and learns how to be rather annoying at cocktail parties.
The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man’s intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a soul-searching, ultimately touching struggle between the obsessive quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.
