Book Review: The Know-It-All, One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs
https://ajjacobs.com/books/the-know-it-all/
This is an hilariously written account of one man’s quest to read and digest all the volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z, 32 volumes with 33000 pages and 65000 entries. In the process the reader will learn interesting facts like the western most and eastern most point in the United States is just a few hundred miles apart and also many esoteric facts like numismatics which is the study of coins and the serrated edges on the coins were added to protect from people shaving off silver when silver coins were in circulation. A.J Jacobs weaves in personal experiences and stories with real facts from the encyclopedia very seamlessly. A.J. is very frank to admit the limits of human brain when he ended up winning just $1000 on the game show, Who Want’s to be a Millionaire; the $32000 question that stumped him was “Erythrocyte” which is another word for “red blood cells”; of course I wouldn’t have known that myself in a million years! To A.J.’s credit, he finishes reading the encyclopedia in a little above a year.
This is an hilariously written account of one man’s quest to read and digest all the volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z, 32 volumes with 33000 pages and 65000 entries. In the process the reader will learn interesting facts like the western most and eastern most point in the United States is just a few hundred miles apart and also many esoteric facts like numismatics which is the study of coins and the serrated edges on the coins were added to protect from people shaving off silver when silver coins were in circulation. A.J Jacobs weaves in personal experiences and stories with real facts from the encyclopedia very seamlessly. A.J. is very frank to admit the limits of human brain when he ended up winning just $1000 on the game show, Who Want’s to be a Millionaire; the $32000 question that stumped him was “Erythrocyte” which is another word for “red blood cells”; of course I wouldn’t have known that myself in a million years! To A.J.’s credit, he finishes reading the encyclopedia in a little above a year.
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