Book : The Know-it-all One Mans Humble Quest To Become The..

-Titulo Original : The Know-it-all One Mans Humble Quest To Become The Smartest Person In The World

-Fabricante :

Simon & Schuster

-Descripcion Original:

Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobss hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.33,000 PAGES 44 MILLION WORDS 10 BILLION YEARS OF HISTORY 1 OBSESSED MAN 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 its 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 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 Jacobss 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. Jacobss 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 mans intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom. Review The Know-It-All is a hilarious book and quite an impressive achievement. Ive always said, why doesnt someone put out a less complete version of the encyclopedia? Well done, A.J. -Jon Stewart, host of The Daily ShowTender....Entertaining....This book really does seek a working definition of what it means to be smart.-Janet Maslin, The New York TimesA.J. Jacobs turns the act of reading the entire Britannica into a hilarious memoir....Its the stunt of the book itself that allows the funny, touching memoir to be so stuffed with nutritious bits of trivia that you feel smart for reading it.-Joel Stein, Time The Know-It-All is funny, original, and strangely heroic. I found myself rooting on Jacobss quixotic, totally endearing quest.-Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated About the Author A.J. Jacobs is the author of Thanks a Thousand, It’s All Relative, Drop Dead Healthy, and the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and My Life as an Experiment. He is 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 and kids. Visit him at AJJacobs and follow him on Twitter @ajjacobs. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One: Aa-akThats the first word in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A-ak. Followed by this write-up: Ancient East Asian music. See gagaku.Thats the entire article. Four words and then: See gagaku.What a tease! Right at the start, the crafty Britannica has presented me with a dilemma. Should I flip ahead to volume 6 and find out whats up with this gagaku, or should I stick with the plan, and move on to the second word in the AA section? I decide to plow ahead with the AAs. Why ruin the suspense? If anyone brings up a-ak in conversation, Ill just bluff. Ill say, Oh, I love gagaku! or, Did you hear that Madonnas going to record an a-ak track on her next CD?a cappellaA lovely surprise. I know exactly what this is -- an ex-girlfriend of mine belonged to an a cappella group in college. They sang songs from Def Leppard and called it Rockapell