The author sets out to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in a year. He tells about his reading and about other things happening in his life while mixing in tidbits of knowledge from his reading. At the start, I thought the guy was a conceited jerk, but he grew on me as the book went along. Jacobs is a Manhattan Jew (non-practicing) from a liberal family who works as an essayist for Esquire. He uses quite a bit of foul language. During the course of the year, he investigates knowledge from several angles: visiting the Britannica offices, talking with a Rabbai, taking a speed-reading course, returning to his grade school for a day, competing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (He crashed on the $32,000 question and so only won $1,000.)

During the year, he and his wife were dealing with infertility, and his descriptions of what they went through broke down my animosity somewhat. In addition, he loves his wife deeply and has a good relationship with his family. He began to seem less conceited and more genuinely interested in life and what it means. He didn’t come close to the right answers, but at least he’s asking the questions.

The tidbits of knowledge sprinkled liberally throughout were interesting, but I haven’t retained many of them. In places, the book was very funny. I should have been marking the good quotes to record here, but I didn’t.