My Library

Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs used to be smart. «in high school and college, [he] was actually quite cerebral.» Covering pop culture at Entertainment Weekly, then highbrow pop culture at Esquire drained his brain. He wanted to feel smart again. So, he decided to read the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way from a-ak to zywiec. Actually, he stole the idea from his father, an attorney and prolific author of law books, who tried the same feat but only made it to the mid-Bs. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World is the story of his year long quest.

At 389 pages, it's not just an extremely condensed version of Brittanica's 33,000. Jacobs shares his efforts to become a father, made more difficult by the annoyance his encyclopedia obsession causes his wife, Julie. As the future smartest person in the world, he uses his college board scores to join Mensa, then takes the Mensa entrance exam anyway...only to find out, that it's a good thing he had those high college board scores. He exams his rivalry with his father, trying to complete the mission his father didn't, and the reader learns that what psychobabblers might call «dysfunction» is really normal, loving, often hilarious and sometimes touching. The facts he obsesses over range from fertility gods to obscure diseases to Rene Descartes' fetish for cross-eyed women. Along the way he encounters Alex Trebek, Ted Kennedy and a trove of Spock-eared Mensans. The book is funny and enlightening, with much of the enlightenment for Jacobs and the reader coming not because of, but in spite of the fact filled tomes of the Encyclopedia.