The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

by A. J. Jacobs | Biographies & Memoirs |
ISBN: 0743250605 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingGoryDetailswing of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 1/9/2017
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingGoryDetailswing from Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Monday, January 9, 2017
I found this good-condition hardcover while dropping some other books off at a new Little Free Library in Pepperell MA, and claimed it for another release copy of this fascinating book.

This one has the author attempting to become smart - by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica cover-to-cover! The introduction explains how he came up with the idea, and as I have fond childhood memories of dipping into my own family's Britannica set (when the volumes weren't being used as booster seats for younger siblings) I was charmed. Granted, I preferred the dip-in-at-random technique to reading start-to-finish, but since any dive into a volume of the encyclopedia led to reading more and more of the adjoining entries, it may come to the same thing.

Anyway: Jacobs sets up his plan, and we get to read along - selectively. The book is organized in alphabetical tidbits, as Jacobs comments on a small subset of his readings - along with the reactions of his family and friends to his discoveries along the way. He comments on the mood-whiplash resulting from jumping from cheerful topics to gruesome ones without notice, and on the sheer volume of data he's taking in. And, all too soon, he starts taxing the patience of his wife with all his newly-acquired trivia!

Among the tidbits: "The United Nations defines a book as a text that is at least 49 pages long. By that definition, the Britannica equals 673 books. Daunting."

Burke and Hare: the most amusing part about this section was that Jacobs knew the history of the pair but did not know the famous rhyme about them; this was greeted with great glee by his family.

The encyclopedia entry for "encyclopedia" leads Jacobs into some self-referential delights - and taught me some things about the major contributors to the original Britannica.

There's Gandhi's teenage-rebel meat-eating phase; Reggie Jackson's entry, which sparks Jacobs' memories of attending one of the games mentioned in the article; Jacobs' use of the "J" volume to dispatch a cockroach ("the leatherette covers are very easy to wipe down"); "the storming of the Bastille was surprisingly lame"; there's Jacobs' involvement with the "Do You Want to Be a Millionaire" TV show; and much, much more.

Another running theme in the book: Jacobs and his wife are trying to have a baby, and the negative pregnancy tests form a somber punctuation to many of the sections. Not to worry, though; things eventually turn around for them.

Under the entry for "procrastination", our author describes all the time he's just wasted Googling ex-girlfriends; if that isn't in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia, it should be.

And near the end of his experiment, he gets to visit the Britannica headquarters and see what's involved in getting articles into the encyclopedia, something that I found fascinating.

Great mix of trivia, history, humor, and autobiography. (I also enjoyed his book The Guinea Pig Diaries.)

Released 7 yrs ago (1/10/2017 UTC) at Little Free Library - CYAA - 27 Raymond Rd. in Candia, New Hampshire USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book in the Little Free Library inside the Candia Youth Athletic Association Building at around 3; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in New Hampshire here.]

*** Released as part of the 2017 New Year self-improvement release challenge. ***

*** Released as part of the 2017 Clean Start for the New Year release challenge, for the detergent-name "All" in the title. ***

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