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One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
Simon and Schuster
October 2005
400 pages
ISBN: 0743250621
Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction Memoir
33,000 PAGES
44 MILLION WORDS
10 BILLION YEARS OF
HISTORY
1 OBSESSED MAN
Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The
Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's
hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to
read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to
Z. To
fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education,
A.J. Jacobs
sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-
two volumes of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells
him it's a
waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind,
and his
father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the
same feat and
quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but
unconvinced. With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness,
The Know-It-All
recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects
Operation
Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his
newly
minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his
father and the
rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day
job as an
editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer
limits of
his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of
intelligence
as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on
Jeopardy!, and
absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles
upon some
of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about
every topic
under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and
the paralyzing
fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the
impending
birth of his first child. The Know-It-All is
an
ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's
intellect,
neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-
consuming
quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-
won wisdom.
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