by A. J. Jacobs
Young, Thomas
Proposed the wave theory of light--and was widely disparaged because any opposition to Newton's theory was unthinkable. As George Bernard Shaw said, "All great truths start as blasphemies." See--I got something out of this.
Zeus
I guess it's no big news that men can't keep their pants on. That was clear even in the first hundred pages of the Britannica, what with the scores of "dissolute" men and their mistresses. But Zeus is in a league of his own. He deserves a gold medal, or better yet, some saltpetre (well, actually, I learned that saltpetre doesn't dampen the libido; so maybe a cold shower). Zeus was the Wilt Chamberlain of Greek gods, spreading his seed far and wide. Every one hundred pages in my reading, there Zeus would be, making it with another woman or, occasionally, with a man. Sometimes Zeus would have sex as Zeus himself, but more often he'd go in disguise. He's taken the shape of a bull, an eagle, a cuckoo, a dark cloud, a shower of gold coins, and an ant. An ant? He seduced Eurymedusa in the form of an ant. I don't even understand what that means. I have a guess, but I can't imagine Eurymedusa found that pleasant, and she may have required ointment.
Zola, Emile
According to some sources, Zola, as a starving writer, ate sparrows trapped outside his windowsill.
zoo
The Aztecs had a magnificent one in Mexico that required a staff of three hundred zookeepers. Also, you should know that Londoners during World War II ate the fish out of their city's zoo.
Seventeen pages left. I've got a tingle in the back of my neck. I want to skim, but I force myself slow down, savor these final entries.
zucchetto
The skullcap worn by Roman Catholic clergymen--the last liturgical vestment in the Britannica!
Zulu, the African nation (whose founder, Shaka, by the way, became "openly psychotic" when his mother died, and refused to allow crops to be planted).
My God, seven more pages.
Leopold Zunz, a Jewish scholar.
Zurich ware, a type of Swiss porcelain.
Zveno Group, a Bulgarian political party.
Zywiec
And here it is. I have arrived. The final entry of the Britannica's 65,000 entries, the last handful of the 44 million words. The bizarre thing is, my pulse is thumping as if I were running an actual marathon. I'm amped up.
I take a deep breath to calm myself, and then I read about Zywiec. Zywiec is a town in south-central Poland. It's known for its large breweries and a 16th-century sculpture called The Dormant Virgin. Population thirty-two thousand.
And that's it. At 9:38 P.M. on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night, sitting in my customary groove on the white couch, I have finished reading the 2002 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I'm not sure what to do. I shut the back cover quietly. I stand up from the couch, then sit back down.
There's no ribbon to break, no place to plant a flag. It's a weird and anti-climactic feeling. The entry itself doesn't help. If the Britannica were a normal book, the ending would presumably have some deeper meaning, some wrap-it-all-up conclusion or shocking twist. But everything in the EB is a slave to the iron discipline of alphabetization, so I'm left with an utterly forgettable entry about a beer-soaked town in south-central Poland. Zywiec. I guess I knew it wouldn't hold all the secrets to the universe (zywiec: a mysterious substance found in badger fur is the reason to go on living!), but still, it's a little disappointing. There's something sad about finishing a huge, yearlong project, an immediate postpartum depression.
I slide the volume back into its space on the mustard-colored shelf, where I expect it will stay for a long time. I wander out to the living room.
"Done," I tell my wife.
"Done for the night?"
"No, done. As in done, done."
She throws open her arms. I get a congratulatory hug and kiss.
"Wait a second," she says. "I have to document this." Julie runs off to the bedroom and reappears with our video camera.
"A.J. Jacobs, you finished reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. What are you going to do now?"
"Um..." I shake my head. I really don't know. I'm stumped.
"Are you going to Disneyland?" prompts Julie.
"Yes, maybe I'll go to Disneyland, founded by Walt Disney, creator of Oswald the Rabbit."
Julie clicks off the camera.
"How about a celebratory dinner?" she asks.
"Yeah, why not?" That'll be nice, a dinner with the long-neglected Julie--that is her name, right? "You want to finish your West Wing?" I ask.
"Sure."
So I sit on the couch next to Julie and watch the end of The West Wing, which is set in the White House, a structure Thomas Jefferson called "big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama."
I think back to my parents' friend who told me the fable wherein the wise men of the kingdom condensed all the encyclopedia's knowledge into a single sentence: "This too shall pass." That's not a bad moral. If you want a single sentence, you could do worse. What's my sentence? I better come up with one now, because at this very moment, I've got more information than I ever will, before that evil Ebbinghaus curve kicks in.
Frankly, I'm not sure what my sentence is. Maybe I'm not smart enough to come up with a single sentence summing up the Britannica. Maybe it'd be better to try a few sentences, and see what sticks. So here goes:
I know that everything is connected like a worldwide version of the six-degrees-of-separation game. I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collection of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity. I know you'd better focus on the good stuff or you're screwed. I know that the race does not go to the swift, nor the bread to the wise, so you should soak up what enjoyment you can. I know not to take cinnamon for granted. I know that morality lies in even the smallest decisions, like whether to pick up and throw away a napkin. I know that an erythrocyte is a red blood cell, not serum. I know firsthand the oceanic volume of information in the world. I know that I know very little of that ocean. I know that I'm having a baby in two months, and that I'm just the tiniest bit more prepared for having him (I can tell him why the sky is blue--and also the origin of the blue moon, in case he cares), but will learn 99 percent of parenthood as I go along. I know that--despite the hyposomnia and the missed Simpsons episodes--I'm glad I read the Britannica. I know that opossums have thirteen nipples. I know I've contradicted myself a hundred times over the last year, and that history has contradicted itself thousands of times. I know that oysters can change their sex and Turkey's avant-garde magazine is called Varlik. I know that you should always say yes to adventures or you'll lead a very dull life. I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing--but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning. And I know that I've got my life back and that in just a few moments, I'm going to have a lovely dinner with my wife.
Additional Sources
BROWN, CRAIG. "How the First Fly Guy Went Up, Up and Wa-hey..." Edinburgh Evening News, December 9, 2003.
COLEMAN, ALEXANDER and CHARLES SIMMONS. All There Is to Know: Readings from the Illustrious Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE. Bouvard and Pecuchet with the Dictionary of Received Ideas. New York: Penguin Group, 1976.
KOGAN, HERMAN. The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
KONING, HANS. "Onward and Upward with the Arts: The Eleventh Edition." The New Yorker, March 2, 1981.
MARKS-BEALE, ABBY. 10 Days to Faster Reading. New York: Warner Books, 2001.
MCCABE, JOSEPH. The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Escondido, Calif.: The Book Tree, 2000.
MCCARTHY, MICHAEL. "It's Not True About Caligula's Horse; Britannica Checked--Dogged Researchers Answer Some Remarkable Queries." Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1999.
MCHE
NRY, ROBERT. "Whatever Happened to Encyclopedic Style." Chronicle of Higher Education, February 28, 2003.
OSTROV, RICK. Power Reading. North San Juan, Calif.: Education Press, 2002.
SARTE, JEAN-PAUL. Nausea. New York: New Directions, 1964.
SHNEIDMAN, EDWIN/ "Suicide On My Mind, Britannica on My Table." American Scholar, autumn 1998.
STERNBERG, ROBERT J. Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life. New York: Plume, 1997.
------ed. Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Index
accents, glottal stop in
accidents:blindness resulting fromfabricated
accomplishments, EB-worthy
Adams, John:Jefferson's July 4th predeceasing ofretirement pleasures of
air travel, ethical dilemma in
Alaska:AJ and Beryl lost in"mosts" claimed for
Allah, in tampered database
alphabet, self-taught man's reading arranged by
American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
American Gothic, who are these people?
anesthetics
animals:guard, unexpected example ofhumans andsleazeball behaviors ofstuffedvoices ofZeus transformations into
anti-neutrino particle, memorizing definition of
aposiopesis T-shirts
Archimedes' screw, EB blasphemed on
Ardrey, Robert, on miracle of man
Aristotle:self-serving marriage maxim oftelegony endorsed by
art, serious appreciation of
atomic bomb (Fat Man), Nagasaki as secondary target of
Attila the Hun:pros and cons ofunfortunate wedding night death of
audiences, riots and uproars avoided by
Australia, hereditary obsession with
authors, good looks an asset to
Aztecs, Planet of the Apes idea lifted from
Babinski reflex, testing for
bad ideas, inertia of
Baghdad, monument to Ali Baba's housekeeper in
Ball of Fire (movie), anti-intellectual vs. pro-education themes in
barnacles, crab testes consumed by
baseball:bearded apocalyptic cult inhow to talk aboutReggie era in
bastards, notable
battles, nudity in
beans, Pythagorean commandment against
beauty, eternal
beauty patches, design and placement of
Bender, Steve, Operation Britannica graded by
Bibleencyclopedia asloopholes inwalnut-sized
Binet, Alfred
bioweapons, Louis XIV's suppression of
birthdays, Einstein's rejection of
blasphemy case, boob defense in
blue-footed booby (just a coincidence), mating dance of
blue moons, cause of
bodies, temperature of
body parts:embalming ofmodification ofin note designationsofficial names forunusual numbers of
body types, classification of
Bolivia, haziness about a river or two in
book title, one-size-fits-all
Bouvard and Pecuchet (Flaubert, that superior bastard)
brain:atrophy ofcommon hazards tocranial capacity andof Einsteingullibility ofmucus originating inongoing loss of cells inplayroom compared with
brain damage, AJ's fear of
breasts:in boob defensemodification ofsee also nipples
British cryptic, clue to "astern" in
British-to-American translations
Brod, Max, Kafka's final wish interpreted by
Brown Universityecstasy atfamous attendees at
Brummel, Beau, rise and fall of
burial:positions inpremature, cell phones for
Bush, George W., days taken off by
calculator tricks, Mensan interest in
camps, all-male, hazards of
capitalism, businessman's attack on
Carol, Aunt, Sartre's Nausea as gift from
cats:Big Boy and Wild Thingcharacter ofcry of (cri-du-chat syndrome)in grammar questionsongs about
celebrities:anatomically interestingcautionary lessons taken fromDalton offspring ofreal names of
Celebrity Deathmatch
cellphones:in coffinsin movie theaters
Central Park, identification of
Chad (as well as Bolivia), haziness about a river or two in
Challis, James, planetary gaffe of
Charles II, King of England, illegitimate children of
Charleses, aids to memorizing of
cheese knives, unanswered questions about
cholesterol, high
cilantro, see coriander
civilization, Pax Mongolia and spread of
Civil War, U.S.:Garibaldi invited tooratory inrebel spy-Union officer love story inTaiping Rebellion compared with
classification of body types
colonialism, percentage of evil in
communism, foxhunter's cofounding of
Complete Family News (newsletter)
compulsions, unkickable
conversational gambits:"a-ak" not helpful inof AJ Sr.internal "ding" heard at onset ofknowledge inat Mensa eventsin ninety minutes with Senator Kennedy"Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"see also evasion strategies; knowledge displays
cooking, coriander in
coral snakes, identification of
coriandercrab soup topped with
corpses, sale of
courtship, see romance and courtship
Crapper, Thomas, myth of
Crossfire, AJ as reticent debater on
cross-referencing, meaningful
crossword puzzles, another debacle
cruelty, in boy's camps
Cruise, Tom, EB silent on
cucumbers, "vampirelike lecherous creature" from Japan obsessed with
curiosity, about everything
curses, usefull
Dalton School:AJ's revisit toethical relativism discovered at
dances:Saint Vitustarantella
Dante Alighieri, video dating prescribed for
death:of family membermetaphors forobituary read beforepassions moderated by contemplation ofpreservation of body afterafter reading EBunusualforms ofsee also burial; corpses
death penalty, AJ in Columbia debate on
DeBakey, Michael
as EB reader
definitions:of "ambergris"of "anti-neutrino particle"of "axillism"of "berry"of "book"of "erythrocyte"of "fruit"of "haboob"of "inch"of "infix"of "intelligence"of "jacks and jills"of "kilogram"memorizing ofof "meter"of "mushrooming"of "mutualism"of "ooze"of "pachycephalosaurus"of "peninsula"of "peon"of "reading"of "riot"of "suicide"of "tarantella"of various rhetorical devicesof "wergild"
deja vu, jamais vu vs.
Delfin, John, crossword philosophy of
depression, evolutionary role of
Descartes, Rene:cross-eyed-women fetish ofjoke about bartender andas proto-Freudian
Disclosures and Remedies Under the Security Law (Jacobs Sr.)
divorce, Pueblo-style
dodo bird, scattered remnants of
Doherty, Shannen, marriage spans of
Doone, Lorna, cookies confused with
Douglas, Cousin, language corrected by
dreams:creativeself-fulfilling
duplicity:of biblical Jacobof males in courtship strategies
earth:locating AJ onsearch for intelligent life ontime taken by rotation ofunrestrained outlay of facts about
Earth Mother, as fertility goddess
Easter Bunny, background and character of
Ebbinghaus, Herman, "forgetting curve" of
Ebert jokes
Ecclesiastes
E! channel
$8000 question, audience thanked for answer to
Einstein, Albertsee also relativity
embalming:Egyptian recipe foras loophole in wife's will
Eminems, miniversions of
Encyclopaedia Brit
annica:admirable anality ofalphabetical sequence ofbloopers inbrilliant quotations helpful in getting intoas bug killercard games clarified bycareer ideas incat issues ofchamber music as an unseemly soft spot ofcross-referencing indedication ofdispassionate approach ofdiversityof everything inelectronic applications ofEleventh Edition of"erythrocyte" found in, too late for Millionaireeven-handedness ofexcitement about diacritics atfacts, not that many, missing fromFifteenth Edition ofFirst Edition and founders of (Macfarquhar, Smellie, and Bell)flexibilitya lesson ofglories ofgravitas added to room bygreat books coverage inGreek history favored byhandy-phrase translations inhard-to-forget book titles inindexing department ofinstant wisdom inon itselflegal knowledge inmain sections ofmarginal utility theory inmaterial aspects ofmedical afflictions found inas noble pursuitnothing evidently left out ofother readers ofphonetic guides not found inphysicality ofpurchase and arrival ofracism inrandiness ofrandomness ofreading of, see Operation Britannicarepetition inromance inscatology inself-help guidance instereotypes broken bysuperior putz's insult often best ways to get intoThirteenth Edition ofunauthorized tweaking ofuneven alphabetical coverage inunorthodox uses ofunusual grounds for entry intovintage and classic editions ofvisit to HQ ofweird and crude facts inworldview of
"encyclopedia":derivation ofligature sometimes seen in
encyclopedias, earliest, longest, strangest, etc.
"Encyclopedia Twit-annica"
Encyclopedie (Diderot et al.)
Engels, Friedrich, ideological dualism of
Enlightenment, Eleventh Edition as culmination of
entertainment:bearbaiting asmusicals about trains asnonstop
Entertainment Weeklyarticle on box office prices incatching colds atCats given send-off atconfession of crush atOscars covered inSenator Kennedy not a longtime subscriber totrend seeking at
eponymy:avoidance ofChauvin's contribution toengineering achievements andlegends ofmisspellings and"sandwich" or "Morris," if you prefer
erythrocyte, defined on Millionaire
Esquire:AJ's job atarticle ideas atarticle on uncommon fetishes inbaseball talk sidestepped atChristmas party atCosmo vs.fashion consciousness at"The Fire Next Time" andhumor ventured atlichen saluted innew perspective gained atscrewups atspeech making atsports conversations at
ethics:"is" vs. "ought" inTolstoyanutilitarian vs. deontology in