The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs

Retrieved from: the library
(0743250605)

Well, I had to read this. The title alone got my attention as I cataloged it last month. Another spur was the fact that I work with two former Encyclopedia Britannica employees.

So, yeah, this guy, a senior editor at Esquire decides he's going to read the entire 32-volume set of the 2002 edition of the EB. In a year. He's nuts. And that's before he starts.

The arrangement of the book is alphabetical by encyclopedia entry, beginning with a-ak ("Four words and then: 'See gagaku.'") and ending with Zywiec ("a beer-soaked town in south-central Poland). He interspersed the Micropedia (short annotations) with the Macropedia (long, long, long articles) so as to preserve some semblance of sanity. And he actually remembers stuff. But not necessarily the stuff you'd probably want him to remember if you were his teacher. He remembers the five-rumped catfish and a French predilection for cross-eyes.

In the process, he comes to terms with his father's penchant for practical jokes and weird trivia, his wife gets pregnant, his know-it-all brother-in-law turns out not to be such a bad guy who actually doesn't know everything, and he annoys his friends and acquaintances with inappropriate spoutings of dull facts. Oh, and he goes on Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire and loses on the definition of "erythrocyte."

Reading this book made me want to read the World Book. ;-)

Fun book. Snarky tone. Light reading.