Synopses & Reviews
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, shall we say, 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 soul-searching, ultimately touching struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.
Review
"[A] comic triumph....It is all enormous fun, educational even....Doubtlessly more enjoyable than reading the EB itself, with lots of arcane nuggets readers can casually drop on the unsuspecting like sacks of flour from a great height." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"[S]o breezy you half expect to see the words lift off the page and float around the room....Whatever genius it took to turn the weighty task of reading the encyclopedia into such an entertaining frolic of a book, my bet is that Jacobs had it all along. (Grade: B+)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"[C]orny, juvenile, smug, tired. Jacobs [is] a poor man's Dave Barry; no, a bag person's Dave Barry....The lead zeppelin jokes are interspersed with musings about his wife's pregnancy and his interaction with his quirky family. This material is even less entertaining." Joe Queenan, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Plenty of good fun pours out of this prose, but Jacobs' Britannica-incited quest to become the smartest person in the world assumes that command of data is the mark of education rather than any sharply honed critical faculties." Booklist
Review
"The Know-It-All is a hilarious book and quite an impressive achievement. I've always said, why doesn't someone put out a less complete version of the encyclopedia? Well done, A.J." Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show and author of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America
Review
"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." P.J. O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of Eat The Rich
Review
"The Know-It-All is funny, original, and strangely heroic. I found myself rooting on Jacobs's quixotic, totally endearing quest." Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated
Review
"I fell in love with this book on page one and I have laughed out loud on every page since. With his hilarious Britannica-fed insights on life, A.J. Jacobs uncovers the profound by way of the trivial. The Know-It-All is endlessly entertaining. Genius, pure." Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Synopsis
Alarmed and more than a little chagrined at the massive gaps in his personal knowledge base, Jacobs sets for himself a suitably daunting, and some might say insane, task: to fill in the holes in his Ivy-League education by reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. With endearing wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Jacobs's freshly harvested knowledge has on every part of his life from his marriage to his sweetheart Julie, to his complicated relationship with his lawyer father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family, to his job as an editor at Esquire.
About the Author
A.J. Jacobs is the author of The New York Times bestsellers The Year of Living Biblically, My Life as an Experiment and The Know-It-All. He has been called "inspired and inspiring" (Vanity Fair), "entertaining" (New York Times) and "hilarious" (Time). He is the editor at large of Esquire magazine, a contributor to NPR, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. He lives in New York City with his wife Julie and their children. Visit him at AJJacobs.com and follow him on Twitter @ajjacobs.