7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Pages 386 pp OCLC 55067170 Originally published 2004 Publisher Simon & Schuster Subject Encyclopædia Britannica | 3.8/5 Goodreads Publication date 2004 ISBN 0-7432-5060-5 Dewey Decimal 031 22 Genre Memoir Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar The Year of Living Biblically, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man, The Guinea Pig Diaries, 'Tis: A Memoir, Reading the OED: One Man | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World is a book by Esquire editor A. J. Jacobs, published in 2004.
Contents
It recounts his experience of reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica; all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition, extending to over 33,000 pages with some 44 million words. He set out on this endeavour to become the "smartest person in the world". The book is organized alphabetically in encyclopedia format and recounts both interesting facts from the encyclopedia and the author's experiences.
It was a New York Times Best Seller.
Reviews
The satirist P.J. O'Rourke said of it: "The Know-It-All is a terrific book. It's a lot shorter than the encyclopedia, and funnier, and you'll remember more of it. Plus, if it falls off the shelf onto your head, you'll live."
In addition to the generally positive reviews, there was one particularly harsh review, published by Joe Queenan in The New York Times Book Review, in which Queenan attacks Jacobs. Queenan contends that many of the facts that Jacobs reports in his book as remarkable discoveries (e.g. the tale of Heloise and Abelard, the assassination of Marat by a woman) worthy of sharing are in fact already common knowledge among educated people. Jacobs responded in a Times rebuttal (published February 13, 2005), pointing out that "the ridiculously hyperbolic subtitle might have been a tip-off" of the book's ironic tone that must have been missed by Queenan. Jacobs's response to Queenan's review—though expressing hurt feelings, bewilderment toward Queenan's outrage, and the opinion that Queenan had become journalism's version of a schoolyard bully—is written in a similarly humorous tone to the book.
Similar feats
A.J. Jacobs was not the first to read the entire Britannica. The earliest recorded example was Fath Ali, who upon becoming the Shah of Persia in 1797, was given a gift of the 3rd edition of the Britannica. After reading all of its 18 volumes, the Shah extended his royal title to include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica". Roughly a century later, Amos Urban Shirk, an American businessman, read the entire 23-volume 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica over a period of four years. He then went on to read the entire 14th edition, spending on average three hours per night.
Bill Gates read the entire World Book Encyclopedia in his youth.
In 2008, Ammon Shea published his account of reading the complete Oxford English Dictionary.
In fiction, a character in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League is hired to copy out the Britannica by hand—for no other reason (at least apparently) than his red hair—although his job is terminated before he finishes the entries beginning with "A".