The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

by A. J. Jacobs

  The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

  A. J. Jacobs

  Also by A.J. Jacobs

  THE TWO KINGS: JESUS AND ELVIS

  AMERICA OFF-LINE

  ESQUIRE PRESENTS: WHAT IT FEELS LIKE (EDITOR)

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Copyright (c) 2004 by A.J. Jacobs

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  This book is an account of the author's experience reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Some events appear out of sequence, and some names and identifying details of individuals mentioned have been changed.

  Book design by Helene Berinsky Index by Sydney Wolfe Cohen

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jacobs, A. J., 1968-

  The know-it-all : one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world / A.J. Jacobs

  p. cm.

  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2. Learning and scholarship. 3. Jacobs, A. J., 1968- 4. United States--Intellectual life--20th century. 5. United States--Intellectual life--21st century. I. Title.

  AE5.E44J33 2004

  031--dc22 2004048233

  ISBN 0-7432-7260-9

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To my wife, Julie

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank Rob Weisbach, who is not only the smartest editor in the world, but a great, kind, and absurdly supportive friend. Thanks also to Peter Breslow and Scott Simon and all the big brains at NPR. I'm grateful to Ted Allen, Shannon Barr, Ginia Bellafonte, Steve Bender, Brian Frazer, Stephen Kory Friedman, David Granger, Andrew Lund, Rick Marin, Victor Ozols, Tom Panelas, Brendan Vaughan, and Andy Ward. I'm indebted to my family and my wife's family who, instead of objecting to this massive invasion of their privacy, were nothing but encouraging. And of course, thanks to my wife Julie, who, when she agreed to marry me, made me the luckiest man in the world.

  Introduction

  I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-garde publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks.

  I know that the British tried to tax clocks in 1797 (huge mistake). I know that Hank Aaron played for a team called the Indianapolis Clowns. I know that Adam, of Bible fame, lived longer than the combined ages of the correspondents of 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II (930 years, to be exact). I know that South America's Achagua tribe worshiped lakes, that the man who introduced baseball to Japan was a communist, and that Ulysses S. Grant thought Venice would be a nice city "if it were drained."

  I know all this because I have just read the first hundred pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I feel as giddy as famed balloonist Ben Abruzzo on a high-altitude flight--but also alarmed at the absurd amount of information in the world. I feel as if I've just stuffed my brain till there are facts dribbling out of my ears. But mostly, I am determined. I'm going to read this book from A to Z--or more precisely, a-ak to zywiec. I'm not even out of the early As, but I'm going to keep turning those pages till I'm done. I'm on my way. Just 32,900 pages to go!

  How did this happen? How did I find myself plopped on my couch, squinting at tiny font about dwarf buttocks and South American lakes? Let me back up a little.

  I used to be smart. Back in high school and college, I was actually considered somewhat cerebral. I brought D. H. Lawrence novels on vacations, earnestly debated the fundamentals of Marxism, peppered my conversation with words like "albeit." I knew my stuff. Then, in the years since graduating college, I began a long, slow slide into dumbness. At age thirty-five, I've become embarrassingly ignorant. If things continue at this rate, by my fortieth birthday, I'll be spending my days watching Wheel of Fortune and drooling into a bucket.

  Like many in my generation, I've watched my expensive college education recede into a haze. Sure, I remember a couple things from my four years at Brown University. For instance, I remember that a burrito left on the dorm room floor is still somewhat edible after five days, as long as you chew really hard. But as for bona fide book learning? Off the top of my head, I recall exactly three things from my classes:

  1. When my comp lit professor outed Walt Whitman.

  2. When the radical feminist in my Spanish class infuriated the teacher by refusing to use masculine pronouns. "La pollo." "No, el pollo." "La pollo." "No, no, no, el pollo." Et cetera.

  3. When the guy in my Nietzsche seminar raised his hand and said, "If I listen to one more minute of this, I'm going to go crazy," then promptly stood up, walked to the back of the class, and jumped out the window. It was a ground-floor window. But still. It was memorable.

  My career choices are partly to blame for my intellectual swan dive. After college, I got a job as a writer at Entertainment Weekly, a magazine devoted to the minutiae of movies, TV, and music. I crammed my cranium with pop culture jetsam. I learned the names of 'N Sync's singers--as well as their choreographer. I could tell you which stars have toupees, which have fake breasts, and which have both. But this meant anything profound got pushed out. I could talk confidently about the doughnut-eating Homer, but I'd forgotten all about the blind guy who wrote long poems. I stopped reading anything except for tabloid gossip columns and books with pictures of attractive celebrities on the cover. In my library, I actually have a well-thumbed copy of Marilu Henner's autobiography. Things improved slightly when I got a job as an editor at Esquire magazine (I now know that Syrah and Shiraz are the same wine grape), but still, my current knowledge base is pathetically patchy, filled with gaps the size of Marlon Brando--whose autobiography I've read, by the way.

  I've been toying with the idea of reading the Britannica for years. Since I haven't accomplished anything particularly impressive in my life, unless you count my childhood collection of airsickness bags from every major airline, I've always thought of this as a good crucible. The tallest mountain of knowledge. My Everest. And happily, this Everest won't cause icicles to form on my ears or deprive me of oxygen, one of my favorite gases. I'll get a crash course in everything. I'll leave no gap in my learning unfilled. In this age of extreme specialization, I will be the last guy in America to have all general knowledge. I'll be, quite possibly, the smartest man in the world.

  I've actually dabbled in reference books before. After college, I spent a couple of days poring over Webster's dictionary--but mostly I was looking for two-letter words that I could use in Scrabble to make annoyingly clever moves. (I was kind of unemployed at the time.) And that turned out to be a very successful experience. You can bet your bottom xu (Vietnamese monetary unit) that I kicked the butt of my jo (Scottish slang for girlfriend) without even putting on a gi (karate outfit).

  But the encyclopedia idea I stole from my father. When I was a freshman in high school, my dad, a New York lawyer, decided he was going to read the Britannica. My father is a man who loves learning. He went to engineering grad school, then to business grad school, then to law school. He was about to enroll in medical school when my mom told him that maybe it'd be a good idea to get a job, since jobs earn money, which is kind of helpful when trying to buy food. But even with a day job, he continued his book addiction and scholarly
writing. Back in 1982, he decided the Britannica was a good way to become an instant expert on all subjects. He made it up to the mid-Bs--I think it was right around Borneo--before giving up, blaming his busy schedule. Now I'm going to take up the cause. I'm going to redeem the family honor.

  I called up my dad to tell him the good news.

  "I'm going to finish what you started."

  "I'm not sure I follow," he said.

  "I'm going to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica."

  A pause. "I hear that the Ps are excellent."

  I figured he'd have a wisecrack. That's his way. He's got a universe of information and wisdom in his head, but with my sister and me, he'd rather tell jokes and play silly games, like filling our water glasses to the very top, making it impossible to drink without spilling. He saves his serious talks for work--or for the other lawyers in the family, of whom there are a good dozen. Maybe that'll change soon. Maybe when I start telling him about the intricacies of the Phoenician legal system, he'll include me in the adult circle.

  I tried the idea out on my wife, Julie, that night as we started scrubbing a mound of dishes.

  "I think I need to get smarter," I said.

  "Why? You're plenty smart." Julie motioned for me to hand her the sponge.

  "I think I need to cut down on reality TV," I said.

  "We could probably limit ourselves to two or three hours a day."

  "And I think I'm going to read the encyclopedia." No response. "The Encyclopaedia Britannica, from A to Z."

  I could tell Julie was skeptical, and with good reason. I met her when we were both working at Entertainment Weekly. She was on the business side, selling ads and chatting up clients, as comfortable in social settings as I am awkward, as practical as I am unrealistic. The romance was slow to start--mostly because she thought I was gay--but she's stuck with me for five years now. In that time, she's heard me announce plenty of other grand schemes--like the time I tried to start a magazine-wide Ping-Pong league, or my plan to write a screenplay about a president with Tourette's syndrome (working title: Hail to the Freakin' Chief)--only to see them fizzle.

  "I don't know, honey," she said finally. "Sounds like kind of a waste of time."

  Make that skeptical and slightly concerned. Julie has enough trouble dragging me out of the apartment to interact with actual, three-dimensional human beings. The encyclopedia, she no doubt surmised, would give me one more excuse to stay pinned to our comfortable couch. "What about eating dinner at every restaurant in New York?" Julie suggested. "You can start with the restaurants with A names, and work your way to the Zs. Wouldn't that be fun?"

  A valiant try. But I'm dead serious about Operation Encyclopedia.

  I got no more enthusiasm when I told my friends. "Can't you just read the Cliffs Notes?" was a popular response. One friend suggested that I read every volume of the children's book Encyclopedia Brown instead. Some wondered if maybe the World Book wasn't more my speed. At least that one has lots of pictures. No, it has to be the Britannica, I told them.

  And it does. Last night, I did some preliminary research on encyclopedias. The Britannica is still the gold standard, the Tiffany of encyclopedias. Founded in 1768, it's the longest continually published reference book in history. Over the years, the Britannica's contributors have included Einstein, Freud, and Harry Houdini. Its current roster includes dozens of academics with Nobels, Pulitzers, and other awards with ceremonies that don't feature commentary from Melissa Rivers. The Britannica passed through some tough times during the dot-com craze, and it long ago phased out the door-to-door salesman, but it keeps chugging along. The legendary eleventh edition from 1911 is thought by many to be the best--it has inspired a fervent, if mild-mannered, cult--but the current editions are still the greatest single source of knowledge.

  Yes, there's the Internet. I could try to read Google from A to Z. But the Internet's about as reliable as publications sold next to Trident and Duracell at the supermarket checkout line. Want a quick check on the trustworthiness of the Internet? Do a search on the words "perfectionnist" and "perfestionist." No, I prefer my old-school books. There's something appealingly stable about the Britannica. I don't even want that newfangled CD-ROM for $49, or the monthly Britannica online service. I'll take the leatherette volumes for $1,400--which is not cheap, but it's certainly less expensive than grad school. And anyway, at the end of this, maybe I can go on Jeopardy! and win enough to buy a dozen sets.

  A couple of days after I placed my order, my boxes arrive. There are three of them, and they're each big enough to hold an air conditioner. I rip open the cardboard and get a look at my new purchase. It's a handsome set of books--sleek and black, with gold embossing on the spine that spells out the first and last entries in that volume. An actual example: Excretion/Geometry. Another: Menage/Ottawa, which somehow confirms what we've all heard about those wanton Canadians.

  Seeing the Britannica in three dimensions not only causes Julie to panic that it'll eat up most of our apartment's shelf space, it also drives home the magnitude of my quest. I'm looking at 33,000 pages, 65,000 articles, 9,500 contributors, 24,000 images. I'm looking at thirty-two volumes, each one weighing in at a solid four pounds, each packed with those giant, tissue-thin pages. The total: 44 million words.

  As a clever procrastination device, I pile all the volumes on the floor in one big stack. It reaches past my nipples. Four foot two! Practically a Danny DeVito of knowledge. I do a little shadowbox with my new adversary, feint a right jab, then step back and look at it again. It's a disturbing sight. Is this whole endeavor really a bright idea? Is this the best use of my time? Maybe I should try to accomplish something easier, like taking a course at Columbia University or buying a new bathing suit. But no, I've made a commitment.

  I plunk the first volume on my lap. It feels weighty. It feels learned. It feels good. When I crack it open, the sturdy spine gives me a pleasant amount of resistance. And then I start to read.

  A

  a-ak

  That's the first word in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. "A-ak." Followed by this write-up: "Ancient East Asian music. See gagaku."

  That's 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 what's 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, I'll just bluff. I'll say, "Oh, I love gagaku!" or, "Did you hear that Madonna's going to record an a-ak track on her next CD?"

  a cappella

  A 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 Rockapella. One for two. Not bad.

  Aachen

  The next few entries destroy my average. I don't recognize the names of any Chinese generals or Buddhist compendiums. And I've never heard of Aachen, the German city that's home to Schwertbad-Quelle, the hottest sulfur spring in the country. I try to memorize the information. If my goal is to know everything, I can't discriminate, even against obscure Teutonic landmarks.

  Aaron

  I move on to Aaron, the brother of Moses. Seems he was sort of the Frank Stallone of ancient Judaism. The loser brother, the one Mom didn't talk about too much. "Oh, Aaron? He's doing okay. Still finding his way. But back to Moses. Did you hear about the Red Sea?"

  This is good stuff. I'm Jewish, but I never got any religious training, never got a bar mitzvah. I know most of my Jewish lore from Charlton Heston movies, and I wouldn't call myself observant, though I do have a light lunch on Yom Kippur. So the Britannica will be my savior, my belated Hebrew school.

  Abbott, Bud, and Costello, Lou

  After a bunch of Persian rulers named Abbas, I get to these two familiar faces. But any sense of relief fades when I learn about their sketchy past. Turns o
ut that the famed partnership began when Costello's regular straight man fell ill during a gig at the Empire Theater in New York, and Abbott--who was working the theater's box office--offered to substitute. It went so well, Abbott became Costello's permanent partner. This is not a heartwarming story; it's a cautionary tale. I'm never calling in sick again. I don't want to come back after a twenty-four-hour flu and find Robbie from the mail room volunteered to be the senior editor. It's a tough world.

  ABO blood group

  Stomach cancer is 20 percent more common in people with type A blood than those with type B or type O. That's me, type A. This is even more disturbing than the tale of the backstabbing Costello. Clearly, I have to be prepared to learn some things I don't like.

  Absalom

  Absalom, a biblical hero, has the oddest death so far in the encyclopedia. During a battle in the forest, Absalom got his flowing hair caught in the branches of an oak tree, which allowed his enemy, Joab, to catch him and slay him. This, I figure, is exactly why the army requires crew cuts.

  Acoemeti

  A group of monks who provided nonstop choral singing in the 5th century. They did it with a relay system--every few hours, a fresh monk would replace the exhausted monk. I love this image, though I am glad I wasn't their neighbor. We're talking twenty-four-hour entertainment long before MTV went on the air. Quite possibly before Mick Jagger was born.

  Addled Brain Syndrome

  Okay, I made that up. There's no such thing as addled brain syndrome. But I'm definitely suffering from something. As I vacuum up this information hour after hour, I find myself so overwhelmed that I have to take frequent breaks to walk around the office. Walk it off, as my gym teachers used to say. You only sprained that brain. It's not a fracture. Walk it off, son.