All the Knowledge in the World

From the “deliriously clever” (Boston Globe) Simon Garfield, New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type, comes the wild and fascinating story of the encyclopedia, from Ancient Greece to the present day. New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "A brilliant book about knowledge itself.” —Deirdre Mask, author of The Address Book “Garfield’s witty history captures the obsessive, quixotic and sometimes error-filled quests of those—from Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D. to Wikipedians in this one—who have attempted to corral all the world’s information into a single source.”—New York Times The encyclopedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader.