The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
Jan 2012 · Random House
3.0star
2 reviews
Ebook
400
Pages
About this ebook
On leaving school or university, you feel pretty pleased with yourself. You've learnt a lot, your'e well-read and you know a whole bunch of obscure facts guaranteed at some point to appear in the questions on Mastermind or University Challenge. Then you get a job, and ten years later youre more eloquent and eager to argue about Britney and Big Brother than Beckett and the Brontes. Sound familiar?
Well it happened to AJ Jacobs too. As an editor at Esquire, Jacobs had built up a rather impressive knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others might take to reading a broadsheet at the weekend, Jacobs chose to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. All 33,000 pages of it.
Bill Bryson meets Schott's Original Miscellany meets Woody Allen. Part assemblage of fascinating trivia, part journey through adulthood, all laugh-out-loud funny.
Well it happened to AJ Jacobs too. As an editor at Esquire, Jacobs had built up a rather impressive knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others might take to reading a broadsheet at the weekend, Jacobs chose to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. All 33,000 pages of it.
Bill Bryson meets Schott's Original Miscellany meets Woody Allen. Part assemblage of fascinating trivia, part journey through adulthood, all laugh-out-loud funny.
Ratings and reviews
3.0
2 reviews
A Google user
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December 23, 2017
Very nice
About the author
A. J. Jacobs is the editor of What It Feels Like and the author of The Two Kings: Jesus and Elvis, America Offline, and Fractured Fairy Tales. He is a senior editor of Esquire and lives in New York City with his wife Julie.
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