The Know-It-All cover art

The Know-It-All

One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

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About this listen

 Early in his career, A.J. Jacobs put his Ivy League education to work at Entertainment Weekly. He emerged five years later knowing which stars have fake boobs, which stars have toupees, which have both, and not much else. This realization led Jacobs on a life-changing quest: to read the entire contents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 33,000 pages, all 44 million words.

The mission began in October 2002, with the word "a-ak". The word launches hilarious misadventures through 32 volumes, as Jacobs accumulates useful and less-so knowledge, and along the way finds a deep connection with his father, examines the nature of knowledge vs. intelligence, and learns how to be rather annoying at cocktail parties.

The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a soul-searching, ultimately touching struggle between the obsessive quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

©2004 A.J. Jacobs (P)2004 HighBridge Company Art & Literature Journalists, Editors & Publishers Literary History & Criticism Witty Funny Inspiring

Critic reviews

"One of the book's strongest parts is its laugh-out-loud humor." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Sidesplitting." ( Time Out New York)
All stars
Most relevant
It could just be my fascination with big books and hunger for knowledge, but this would make a great tv show or, at least, a movie 😃

Just great!

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Had this as our 'bedtime story' learnt some good snippets of information (wish we could remember all of it!) It was funny, interesting and very well told. You can pick this up, listen to a bit and pick up where you left off.
A really enjoyable listen, thankyou.

Just Brilliant!

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Had so much fun listening to that book, so funny and interesting. Learnt a lot of new facts.
I would love to have this book read by the author, the same way other books are. The narrator is not bad but does awful accents and sometimes overacting.

Interesting and personal book

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