33,000 pages 44 million words 10 billion years of history 1 obsessed man Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but, shall we say, unconvinced. With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child. 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 all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

No one knows more about everything - especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling - than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world's great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-All he serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth: "Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all." Studded with cameos of Waters's stars, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from Waters's personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters's most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book - another instant Waters classic. 'Waters doesn't kowtow to the received wisdom, he flips it the bird . . . [Waters] has the ability to show humanity at its most ridiculous and make that funny rather than repellent' Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post 'Carsick becomes a portrait not just of America's desolate freeway nodes - though they're brilliantly evoked - but of American fame itself' Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times Book Review

The Newnes Know It All Series takes the best of what our authors have written to create hard-working desk references that will be an engineer's first port of call for key information, design techniques and rules of thumb. Guaranteed not to gather dust on a shelf!Electronics Engineers need to master a wide area of topics to excel. The Circuit Design Know It All covers every angle including semiconductors, IC Design and Fabrication, Computer-Aided Design, as well as Programmable Logic Design. - A 360-degree view from our best-selling authors - Topics include fundamentals, Analog, Linear, and Digital circuits - The ultimate hard-working desk reference; all the essential information, techniques and tricks of the trade in one volume

We Get Results We know what it takes to succeed in the classroom and on tests. This book includes strategies that are proven to improve student performance. We provide - content review, detailed lessons, and practice exercises modeled on the skills tested by standardized tests - proven test-taking skills and techniques such as how to determine the main idea of a passage and write answers to open-response questions

What do Belle, Dorothy, and Snow White all have in common? They have issues with the men in their lives. Interestingly enough, weve been spoon fed these tales of relational dysfunction since the crib, so no wonder half of all marriages suffer the fate of divorce. Often it is the expectations we learn as children that dictate the outcomes of adult life. If we are to grow and develop into mature, functional relationships it will take revisiting the lessons of the past to create a better tomorrow. In this farcical yet relevant work, Life Coach Early Jackson approaches the cycle of bad relationships from a fairy tale vantage. Women learn there is not a new problem that men present. In fact, these issues are as old as the stories we heard as children. Youll learn from the Real Housewives of Fantasy what it takes to live Happily ever after.

Maud (English, Simon Fraser U.) offers a narrative account of the life and work of poet Charles Olson, focusing on the poet's lifelong reading material as a basis for understanding his work. Drawing on an annotated listing of his library, as well as his childhood books and poetry by his contemporaries, he links the books to the poet's intellectual and poetic development at each stage of his career. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the fourth novel of this thrilling series, the Pentagon suspects that the brutal murder of the daughter of a revered Army general is tied to a string of deadly assassinations of U.S. military personnel. Counterintelligence Staff Sergeant David DeLuca and his CI team of specialists are brought in to investigate.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. His amazing life experience also includes being an oyster pirate, railroad hobo, gold prospector, sailor, war correspondent and much more. He wrote adventure novels & sea tales, stories of the Gold Rush, tales of the South Pacific and the San Francisco Bay area - most of which were based on or inspired by his own life experiences. Content: The Cruise of the Dazzler A Daughter of the Snows The Call of the Wild The Kempton-Wace Letters The Sea-Wolf The Game White Fang Before Adam The Iron Heel Martin Eden Burning Daylight Adventure The Scarlet Plague A Son of the Sun The Abysmal Brute The Valley of the Moon The Mutiny of the Elsinore The Star Rover The Little Lady of the Big House Jerry of the Islands Michael, Brother of Jerry Hearts of Three Son of the Wolf The God of His Fathers Children of the Frost The Faith of Men Tales of the Fish Patrol Moon-Face Love of Life Lost Face South Sea Tales When God Laughs The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii Smoke Bellew The Night Born The Strength of the Strong The Turtles of Tasman The Human Drift The Red One On the Makaloa Mat Dutch Courage Uncollected Stories The Road The Cruise of the Snark John Barleycorn The People of the Abyss Theft Daughters of the Rich The Acorn-Planter A Wicked Woman The Birth Mark The First Poet Scorn of Woman Revolution and Other Essays The War of the Classes What Socialism Is What Communities Lose by the Competitive System Through The Rapids on the Way to the Klondike From Dawson to the Sea Our Adventures in Tampico With Funston's Men The Joy of Small Boat Sailing Husky, Wolf Dog of the North The Impossibility of War...