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''The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World'' is a book by ''Esquire'' editor A. J. Jacobs, published in 2004. It recounts his experience of reading the entire ''Encyclopædia Britannica''; all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition, extending to over 33,000 pages with some 44 million words. He set out on this endeavour to become the "smartest person in the world". The book is organized alphabetically in encyclopedia format and recounts both interesting facts from the encyclopedia and the author's experiences. It was a New York Times Best-Seller.〔Dust jacket of The Year of Living Biblically, a later book also by A.J. Jacobs〕 == Reviews == The satirist P.J. O'Rourke said of it: "The Know-It-All is a terrific book. It's a lot shorter than the encyclopedia, and funnier, and you'll remember more of it. Plus, if it falls off the shelf onto your head, you'll live." In addition to the generally positive reviews, there was one particularly harsh review, published by Joe Queenan in ''The New York Times Book Review'', in which Queenan attacks Jacobs. Queenan contends that many of the facts that Jacobs reports in his book as remarkable discoveries (eg the tale of Heloise and Abelard, the assassination of Marat by a woman) worthy of sharing are in fact already common knowledge among educated people. Jacobs responded in a ''Times'' rebuttal (published February 13, 2005), pointing out that "the ridiculously hyperbolic subtitle might have been a tip-off" of the book's ironic tone that must have been missed by Queenan. Jacobs's response to Queenan's review — though expressing hurt feelings, bewilderment toward Queenan's outrage, and the opinion that Queenan had become journalism's version of a schoolyard bully — is written in a similarly humorous tone to the book. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Know-It-All」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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