The Know-It-All

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

By: A. J. Jacobs

Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor

Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Critic reviews

"One of the book's strongest parts is its laugh-out-loud humor." (Publishers Weekly)
"Sidesplitting." (Time Out New York)

Dreadful

Pretentious, smug and boring. The narrator can't pronounce words of more than two syllables, and he's working with dreck to begin with. The author obviously thinks he's cute--someone MUST disabuse him of this notion, else he kills the next hapless victim he corners at a cocktail party. Less an amusing romp through the alpahabet than a sad and pathetic insight into the things people do to try to give themselves prestige. Mr. Jacobs should have stuck to whatever it was he did at Esquire.

Bigger waste of time than actually reading the Encyclopedia Britannica

Not interesting at all. Boring account of a man that no one would aspire to be as he reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, and his family, friends, and world renowned academics make fun of him. He lists random facts from the Britannica along the way but not in a way that you would remember any of them. Do yourself a favor and skip this one. I listened all the way through and wish I had cut my losses at the beginning.

Slugging my way through it

Listening to this book is very similar to the authors experience with reading the encyclopedia-sometimes interesting, but a lot of useless knowledge and way too much name dropping. A.J. clearly comes from a family of privilege, so it's not so much "average man tries to rise above" as it is "Well educated and pampered guy spends weekends at his parents in the Hamptons being a little bit obnoxious"
I really wanted to like this book....I really did, but it's just not doing it for me.

Awghh! My ears! My ears!

It's possible that there is someone in the world whose voice is more annoying than Geoffrey Cantor's... one of the animated chipmunks, perhaps, or Edith Bunker. But neither of them, notice, recorded audio books. Cantor's whining nasal voice, self-conscious delivery and frequent mispronunciations significantly impaired my tolerance for what was already a disappointing book. Author AJ Jacobs is a prat, and not in a good way. His writing tries hard for "I recognize and can laugh at my own failings" but instead comes off as "I'm so darn cute that even my flaws are adorable." I dare say to Mr. Jacobs' wife, adorable they may be...the rest of us would do better to save our time, disk space, and hearing for works by David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs instead.

Meh

Good premise, but the telling drones on with brief flashes of humor. It "read" like actually reading through the encyclopedia, NOT the best material to hook a reader or listener beyond the first handful of factoids.

Just like it sounds

Whats more boring then reading 32 volumes of the enclyclepedia Britannica? Listing to somebody talking about how he read 32 volumes of the enclclepedia Britannica. This book is a horrible listen. Some of the stories are intresting, but you are still listening to a guy go thru the enclyclepedia letter by letter. GOSH, what was I thinking when I ordered this. URGH.

A none review

Not easy to write a review about a book one has not read. Well I read about 30 minutes of it. And within 30 minutes I found the author to be a bit naive about what constitutes trivia as opposed to more serious knowledge. I was truly curious about this book and would have given the author the benefit of the doubt, forced myself hoping for some kind of revelation after one hour or two. But the narrator gave it the fatal blow. The forced enthusiasm, the loud nasal voice, the unnecessary frantic pace were too much for me to endure. I gave up.

Remember the Saying: No One Likes A ...

I tried very hard to get through this book to gleam some sort of redeeming value, but I couldn't, I just couldn't. Found that the voice selected to narrate the book was a finger nails on the chalkboard sounding boyish-man. I know some like this book, just not for me. Do not like that I wasted my time and my money. There truly are so many more important things to do in life than to read an encyclopedia and then to write about it.

just not that into this

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

just not for me.. who would like this? hmm... anyone who really loves woody allen monologues would be smitten with this work.

Any additional comments?

this book is that old friend who tries way too hard to be clever.. if you are yearning again for a long conversation with that friend, then you should get this book. if you are not, then you should pass.

Forget it

It's true that there are laugh out loud moments. However I found myself disliking the author. Maybe it was partly due to the narrator who sounds kind of whiney, but the more I heard of the author's personal life (which was too much), the less I liked him and his family.