Word: encyclopaedia
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...USED TO BE NICE TO sit next to A.J. Jacobs at a dinner party. He's funny, smart, polite and totally nonthreatening-looking. But ever since he read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica--which he did to write his hilarious book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon & Schuster; 386 pages)--it is best to sit far, far away. His blurting of arcana has got so bad, his wife started fining him $1 for every irrelevant fact he crowbarred into conversation. "She was lenient," he told TIME. "I got away...
...book succeeds because, unlike in real life, Jacobs (an Esquire editor and NPR contributor) confines his written observations on Encyclopaedia Britannica articles to jottings the length of entries in Schott's Original Miscellany. (Among the facts he highlights: the Bayer company invented heroin; toward the end of his life, Nathaniel Hawthorne constantly scribbled "64" on scraps of paper; René Descartes liked cross-eyed chicks.) Instead, he uses his book, which is organized by Encyclopaedia Britannica entries, to do what he has done best as a magazine writer: stunt journalism. The entry on "Vital Fluid" leads to a story about getting...
...Best Film Book: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema...
Sources: AP, GlobalSecurity.org USGS, United Nations Mine Action Program, CIA World Factbook, Encyclopaedia Britannica
...values, insisting that all students ought to receive a liberal-arts education with an understanding of that philosophy. He helped revise the core curriculum at the University of Chicago accordingly, and conceived the Great Books program, which is based on 443 classics reprinted in a 54-volume set by Encyclopaedia Britannica. His works include How to Read a Book, Aristotle for Everybody and Six Great Ideas...