Name: The Know-It-All
ISBN: 9780743250627

The Know-It-All

"Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A. J. Jacob's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z." "The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically descriptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs' 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. Jacobs' 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."--BOOK JACKET.

What Hacker News says

vunderbaJan 2026

Totally agree. If you like this style of memoir + deep subject dive, I also highly recommend anything by A.J. Jacobs - his "Year of Living Biblically", and "The Know-It-All" are great reads in the same vein.

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touisteurOct 2017

The book "The Know-it-all" by A.J. Jacobs was a great fun read a while back, on a similar topic. https://www.amazon.com/Know-All-Humble-Become-Smartest/dp/07...

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timoteostewartJan 2024

On a less ambitious scale: There is a book about someone who read through the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. It’s titled “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World,” written by A.J. Jacobs. In this book, Jacobs chronicles his experience of reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z, sharing the knowledge he gained, the quirky facts he learned, and how this quest affected his life and relationships. The book is a blend of humor, trivia, and personal reflection, making it an entertaining read for those of us interested in knowledge and learning.

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