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.
33,000 PAGES
44 MILLION WORDS
10 BILLION YEARS OF HISTORY
1 OBSESSED MAN
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.
New from AMP In his self-professed quest to "become the smartest person in the world," A.J. Jacobs undertook the daunting task of reading all 44 million words of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His dutiful notes scribbled along the way to this self-appointed title became an impressive treasury of little-known facts, a memoir of the year he spent on the journey, and finally a New York Times best-seller, selling almost 40,000 copies its first month of publication. It's part trivia book, part journal in which he humorously details, among other things, the annoyance displayed by friends and even his own pregnant wife at his newfound and seemingly limitless supply of knowledge. All of this is captured on the daily pages of this calendar, which, like the book, not only has the potential to make readers smarter, but also touches the funny bone as well as the heart.
"
The Know-It-All is funny, original, and strangely heroic. I found myself rooting on Jacobs's quixotic, totally endearing quest."
—Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated
