The Know-It-All

In The Know-It-All, the American journalist A.J. Jacobs hits a premature mid-life crisis and decides to read all of the 33000 pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In his job as Esquire editor he has to decide on:

“whether we should run the cleavage shot or the butt shot of the actress of the month”.

“long, slow slide into dumbness”

“Reading the Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system, one with no shortage of shows about Sumerian cities.”

“Heroin was first developed by the Bayer Company. That'll whisk your headache away faster than a couple of dozen aspirin. Take two syringefuls and call me in the morning. Or late afternoon.”

“If the Britannica has taught me anything, it's to be more careful. I don't want to turn into an unseemly noun or verb or adjective someday. I don't want to be like Charles Boycott, the landlord in Ireland who refused to lower rents during a famine, leading to the original boycott. I don't want to be like Charles Lynch, who headed an irregular court that hung loyalists during the Revolutionary War. I can't have “Jacobs” be a verb that means staying home all the time or washing your hands too frequently.”