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 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 struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

From the bestselling author of "The Year of Living Biblically "and "The Know-It-All "comes the truly hilarious story of one person's quest to become the healthiest man in the world.
Hospitalized with a freak case of tropical pneumonia and ashamed of a middle-aged body best described as "a python that swallowed a goat," A.J. Jacobs felt compelled to change his ways and get healthy. To accomplish this epic task, he consulted an army of experts and subjected himself to dozens of different workouts, diets, and devices--from Finger Fitness to Strollercize sessions, veganism to extreme chewing.
The story of his transformation is not only brilliantly entertaining, but it just may be the healthiest book ever written. It will make you laugh until your sides split and endorphins flood your bloodstream. It will move you emotionally and get you moving physically in surprising ways. It will serve you up today's best health advice. And it will give you occasion to reflect on the body's many mysteries and the ultimate pursuit of health: a well-lived life.

The World s Cities offers instructors and students in higher education an accessible introduction to the three major perspectives influencing city-regions worldwide: City-Regions in a World System; Nested City-Regions; and The City-Region as the Engine of Economic Activity/Growth.

The book provides students with helpful essays on each perspective, case studies to illustrate each major viewpoint, and discussion questions following each reading. "The World s Cities" concludes with an original essay by the editor that helps students understand how an analysis incorporating a "combination "of theoretical perspectives and factors can provide a richer appreciation of the world s city dynamics.

This volume chronicles the maturation of the South Korean auto industry and its native automakers, from the 1997 Asian Crisis to 2019. After examining the context for domestic vehicle production in South Korea, the author presents multiple case studies for all five Korean automakers: General Motors Korea/Daewoo Motors, Kia, Hyundai, Ssangyong and Renault Samsung. This includes coverage of Hyundai-Kia’s foreign plants in North America, Europe, India, China, and Emerging Asia. The book closes by assessing the five-to-ten-year future outlooks for Korean automakers at home and abroad. This important work will prove informative to scholars of business, management, automotive history, international development, Asian studies, and public administration.

In 1962, South Korea assembled just 1,100 new automobiles. By 1996, this total had soared to 2,812,714. What explains this remarkable growth? The answer is complex, and involves a combination of a supportive State, timely technology alliances, a skilled but historically low-paid workforce, aggressive pricing, savvy entrepreneurs, and fortuitous circumstances. Despite this amazing ascent, comparatively little has been written about the Korean auto industry in English. In the first of a two-volume set, this 11-chapter book seeks to help fill this void by providing in-depth examinations of all six of Korea's automakers from their beginnings through 1996. Uniquely written from the perspective of industry analysts at the time (without knowledge of the Asian Fiscal Crisis), the book should prove informative to practitioners, scholars, and students interested in automotive history, international political economy, Asian studies, and more.

From the bestselling author of "The Know-It-All" comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible. A.J. Jacobs chronicles his hilarious and thoughtful year spent obeying―a s literally as possible―the tenets of the Bible.
Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.
The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.
Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations--much to his wife's chagrin.
Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.
Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the "Bible," part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

This book examines the dramatic increase in automotive assembly plants in the former Socialist Central European (CE) nations of Czechia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia from 1989 onwards. Enticed by relatively lower-wage labour and significant government incentives, the world's largest automakers have launched more than 20 passenger car assembly complexes in CE nations, with production accelerating dramatically since 2001. As a result, the annual passenger car production in Western Europe declined by more than 20% between 2001 and 2015, and alternatively in the CEE it increased by nearly 170% during this period. Drawing on case studies of 25 current and former foreign-run assembly plants, the author presents a rare historical account of automotive foreign assembly plants in the CE following this dramatic geographic shift. This book will expand the knowledge of policy-makers in Europe in relation to their pursuits of FDI and will be of great interest to scholars and students of business, economic history, political science, and development.

This book chronicles the divergent growth trends in car production in Belgium and Spain. It delves into how European integration, high wages, and the demise of GM and Ford led to plant closings in Belgium. Next, it investigates how lower wages and the expansion strategies of Western European automakers stimulated expansion in the Spanish auto industry. Finally, it offers three alternate scenarios regarding how further EU expansion and Brexit may potentially reshape the geographic footprint of European car production over the next ten years. In sum, this book utilizes history to help expand the knowledge of scholars and policymakers regarding how European integration and Brexit may impact future auto industry investment for all EU nations.

Over the past forty years, state/provincial and local governments in the United States and Canada have provided foreign automakers with approximately $4.80 billion in incentives in order to lure light vehicles assembly plants to their areas. This has included tax abatements, infrastructure construction, land giveaways, job training programs, and other subsidies. As of early 2015, ten foreign vehicle makers operated 20 light vehicles in developed North America. Despite the fact that all ten of these automakers have pursued a similar pattern-first exporting vehicles into the United States and Canada before launching vehicle plants in developed North America-each has followed its own specific historical development path and has created its own unique growth trajectory. This book provides a unique historical and qualitative review of these ten vehicle makers, from their early beginnings to their export entry into the United States and/or Canada through early 2015. In addition, it chronicles the histories of more than a dozen former automakers and potential future foreign light motor vehicle assembly plants in the United States and Canada. This includes the first foreign automaker to build its cars in the United States, De Dion-Bouton of France in July 1900, the early 20th Century endeavors of Fiat, Mercedes, and Rolls Royce, and the present day hopes of Chinese and Indian automakers. In the process, the text also provides an assessment of the top competing states and sites for any future plants, the possible incentives packages governments may offer to attract such facilities, and an estimated incentive value for each automaker. Overall, the goal of this book is to expand the knowledge of policymakers at all tiers of government in the United States and Canada and to help them take a more holistic look at the pros and cons of attracting Automobile Manufacturing FDI. It is hoped that this will enable them to make more informed decisions when pursuing a new foreign motor vehicle assembly plant. Its findings should also prove informative to urban and regional planning, political science, sociology, economics, labor, and international development scholars and students in North America and worldwide.

Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs has undergone a life-changing and entertaining journey. The idea is deceptively simple: he takes one of our greatest pleasures- our morning cup of coffee - and tries to thank every single person involved in making it, from the barista to the coffee farmer and all those in between. This turns out to be a stunningly large number, including artists, chemists, presidents, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers and goatherds. Hundreds of people. Thousands. Maybe more. Through this seemingly straightforward quest, Jacobs reveals inspiring truths. The book is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows us how much we take for granted. It teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder and more impactful. And it will inspire readers to follow their own "Gratitude Trails." Gratitude was not an emotion that came easily to Jacobs. His innate disposition is more Larry David than Tom Hanks. But he knew that gratitude is perhaps the most important key to human happiness, the chief of all virtues, as Cicero said. Science has shown gratitude's benefits are legion: it helps you sleep, improves your diet, and makes you more likely to recover from illnesses. Jacobs wanted to inspire his kids to embrace gratitude, so he decided to commit himself to a radical experiment. Over the course of several months, Jacobs went on a journey that took him across continents and up and down the social ladder. He experienced joy, wonder, guilt and depression. He met great characters. He learned just how far-flung are those involved - from the Minnesota miners who get the iron that makes the steel that makes the coffee roasters, to the Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a moment. His adventures include: A trip to a remote farm in Colombia, where he experienced first-hand how challenging it is to pick the coffee fruits. Several days with a coffee taster who taught Jacobs the secrets of the trade, and schooled him in the vocabulary that rivals wine sommeliers. (The taster doesn't just detect notes of apple in his coffee. He says what kind of apple -- Gala? Honeycrisp?) Because coffee is 98.4 percent water, Jacobs visited the vast upstate reservoirs that supply New York City, and thanked the folks whose homes were destroyed to make way for the lakes. Jacobs devotes a chapter on the cup-makers, including the rags-to-riches inventor of the "Java Jacket," that underappreciated cardboard ring you slip over your cup. It has saved millions of fingers and thumbs from burning discomfort, but we never give it a second thought. The food safety inspectors, who keep our coffee free from an alarming number of diseases and creatures. Along with entertaining tales, the book is filled with wonderful insights and useful tips. Readers learn how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the handful that go wrong. They read about our culture's dangerous overemphasis on individuals instead of teams. They learn the art of "savouring meditation". They learn the pros and cons of globalism. They learn to appreciate the astounding work it takes to create even the most simple items in our lives. There's even a gratitude hack to help them fall asleep.

The World's Cities offers instructors and students in higher education an accessible introduction to the three major perspectives influencing city-regions worldwide: City-Regions in a World System; Nested City-Regions; and The City-Region as the Engine of Economic Activity/Growth. The book provides students with helpful essays on each perspective, case studies to illustrate each major viewpoint, and discussion questions following each reading. The World's Cities concludes with an original essay by the editor that helps students understand how an analysis incorporating a combination of theoretical perspectives and factors can provide a richer appreciation of the world's city dynamics.

A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: “You don’t know me, but I’m your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.”

And so begins A.J. Jacobs’s quest to build the biggest family tree in history. In an era of us-versus-them thinking, this book is a hilarious, heartfelt and profound exploration of what binds us all – where family begins, how far it goes, and the science that is revolutionizing the way we think about ethnicity, history and the human species.

This book is about A.J. Jacobs’s family. But it’s also about your family. Because it is the same family.

In 1962, South Korea assembled just 1,100 new automobiles. By 1996, this total had soared to 2,812,714. What explains this remarkable growth? The answer is complex, and involves a combination of a supportive State, timely technology alliances, a skilled but historically low-paid workforce, aggressive pricing, savvy entrepreneurs, and fortuitous circumstances. Despite this amazing ascent, comparatively little has been written about the Korean auto industry in English. In the first of a two-volume set, this 11-chapter book seeks to help fill this void by providing in-depth examinations of all six of Korea's automakers from their beginnings through 1996. Uniquely written from the perspective of industry analysts at the time (without knowledge of the Asian Fiscal Crisis), the book should prove informative to practitioners, scholars, and students interested in automotive history, international political economy, Asian studies, and more.

A.J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot of strange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by the Supreme Court and the on-going debate about how the Constitution should be interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live by the Constitution.

In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations.

The book blends unforgettable adventures—delivering a handwritten petition to Congress, applying for a Letter of Marque to become a legal pirate for the government, and battling redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group—with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides. Jacobs dives deep into originalism and living constitutionalism, the two rival ways of interpreting the document.

Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and perils of living like it’s the 1790s. He relishes, for instance, the slow thinking of the era, free from social media alerts. But also discovers the progress we’ve made since 1789 when married women couldn’t own property.

Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court Justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.

This book chronicles the divergent growth trends in car production in Belgium and Spain. It delves into how European integration, high wages, and the demise of GM and Ford led to plant closings in Belgium. Next, it investigates how lower wages and the expansion strategies of Western European automakers stimulated expansion in the Spanish auto industry. Finally, it offers three alternate scenarios regarding how further EU expansion and Brexit may potentially reshape the geographic footprint of European car production over the next ten years. In sum, this book utilizes history to help expand the knowledge of scholars and policymakers regarding how European integration and Brexit may impact future auto industry investment for all EU nations.

Always be on your very best behaviour and avoid those small yet utterly cringeworthy social gaffes by doing things the 'right way'. This work corrects over 40 errant actions displayed by the modern miss and mister, from loading the toilet roll incorrectly to flamboyant public sneezing. Graded in difficulty, the reader progresses through the programme at their own pace (it even explains how to accept the barrage of compliments your beautiful behaviour will attract). Every entry is gathered from international experts, supported by no-nonsense illustrations (showing the wrong and the right ways) to smooth every student of etiquette through the minefield of manners.

From the bestselling author of "The Know-It-All" comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.

Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.

The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.

Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

In the tradition of The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs and Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler comes Abigail Pogrebin's My Jewish Year, a lively chronicle of the author's journey into the spiritual heart of Judaism. Although she grew up following some holiday rituals, Pogrebin realized how little she knew about their foundational purpose and contemporary relevance; she wanted to understand what had kept these holidays alive and vibrant, some for thousands of years. Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the religious calendar. Whether in search of a roadmap for Jewish life or a challenging probe into the architecture of Jewish tradition, readers will be captivated, educated and inspired by Abigail Pogrebin's My Jewish Year.

One man. Ten extraordinary quests.
Bestselling author and human guinea pig A. J. Jacobs puts his life to the test and reports on the surprising and entertaining results. He goes undercover as a woman, lives by George Washington's moral code, and impersonates a movie star. He practices "radical honesty," brushes his teeth with the world's most rational toothpaste, and outsources every part of his life to India--including reading bedtime stories to his kids.
And in a new adventure, Jacobs undergoes scientific testing to determine how he can put his wife through these and other life-altering experiments--one of which involves public nudity.
Filled with humor and wisdom, "My Life as an Experiment "will immerse you in eye-opening situations and change the way you think about the big issues of our time--from love and work to national politics and breakfast cereal.

On leaving school or university, you feel pretty pleased with yourself. You've learnt a lot, your'e well-read and you know a whole bunch of obscure facts guaranteed at some point to appear in the questions on Mastermind or University Challenge. Then you get a job, and ten years later youre more eloquent and eager to argue about Britney and Big Brother than Beckett and the Brontes. Sound familiar? Well it happened to AJ Jacobs too. As an editor at Esquire, Jacobs had built up a rather impressive knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others might take to reading a broadsheet at the weekend, Jacobs chose to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. All 33,000 pages of it. Bill Bryson meets Schott's Original Miscellany meets Woody Allen. Part assemblage of fascinating trivia, part journey through adulthood, all laugh-out-loud funny.