Jacobs, A.J. 1968–

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Jacobs, A.J. 1968–

(Arnold Steven Jacobs, Jr.)

PERSONAL: Born March 20, 1968, in New York, NY; married Julie Schoenberg. Education: Attended Brown University.

ADDRESSES: Office—Esquire, 250 W. 55th St., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Worked as a journalist for Antioch Daily Ledger and Entertainment Weekly; Esquire, New York, NY, editor.

WRITINGS:

The Two Kings, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1994.

America Off-Line: The Complete Outernet Starter Kit, Calder Books (New York, NY), 1996.

(Reteller) Fractured Fairy Tales, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor) What It Feels Like, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2003.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributes regularly to National Public Radio, as well as to periodicals, including Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, New York, New York Observer, and New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS: A.J. Jacobs was born and raised in New York City, then attended Brown University where he studied philosophy. Jacobs serves as a senior editor for Esquire magazine and has also written for a number of magazines and newspapers, including Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, New York, the New York Observer, the New York Times, and the Antioch Daily Ledger. His books, collections of his entertaining nonfiction pieces, and very much in the spirit of the articles he writes both for publication and for National Public Radio.

America Off-Line: The Complete Outernet Starter Kit provides a comedic look at Jacobs's take on the internet in reverse. The book parodies the online craze, poking fun at Web browsers, Internet service providers, and chat rooms by promoting their exact opposite, commonly known as reality. Jenny Donelan, in a review for Byte, remarked that "if you've spent much time on commercial on-line services, you're sure to get a guffaw or two from America Off-Line.

With The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World Jacobs took on the ambitious goal of reading, in their entirety, all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, with the idea that, once he was finished, he would know "everything." The project was designed to help Jacobs escape the intellectual rut he felt stuck in following college graduation. He chronicles his experience in his book, summarizing his broadening knowledge in brief, humorous essays. In a review for Booklist, Mark Knoblauch remarked that "plenty of good fun pours out of this prose." Laura Miller, writing for Entertainment Weekly, stated that "what he winds up with by the end of this amiable and funny memoir of the year he spent reading the world's greatest encyclopedia is really just a higher class of jetsam," while Time contributor Joel Stein wrote that "what keeps the book from being no more than a series of alphabetically arranged humor columns is the leitmotif of becoming a man: Jacobs somehow turns the effort of reading thirty-three thousand pages into the world's most passive Bildungsroman." Jamie Watson, in a review for School Library Journal, called the book "a love note to human knowledge and the joys of obtaining it." In an article for Bookseller, Benedicte Page wrote: "The experience of reading the Encyclopaedia has left him, he says, with a very curious mental landscape. 'Every action during the day sparks a memory of another absurd and useless fact. I'm just looking now at my touch tone phone, and I remember the entry on how the keys were ergonomically designed to create the fastest dialing, which was a nice fact, I thought, that they put some thought into the key arrangement.'" A contributor for Publishers Weekly concluded that "Jacobs's ability to juxtapose his quirky, sardonic wit with oddball trivia make this one of the season's most unusual books."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America's Intelligence Wire, October 28, 2003, "Interview with A.J. Jacobs."

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Mark Knoblauch, review of The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, p. 22.

Bookseller, October 1, 2004, Benedicte Page, "From A-ak to Zywiec: A.J. Jacobs on Why He Read the Whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica," p. 26.

Byte, January, 1997, Jenny Donelan, review of America Off-Line: The Complete Outernet Starter Kit, p. 34.

Computer Life, January, 1997, Sean Kelly, review of America Off-Line, p. 34.

Entertainment Weekly, November 15, 1996, Megan Harlan, review of America Off-Line, p. 66; September 24, 2004, Laura Miller, "Soft-Boiled Egghead: For His Winsome Memoir The Know-It-All A.J. Jacobs Reads the Entire Encyclopedia," p. 111.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2004, review of The Know-It-All, p. 727.

Kliatt, July, 2005, Nola Theiss, review of The Know-It-All, p. 61.

Library Journal, October 1, 2004, Terren Ilanna Wein, review of The Know-It-All, p. 80.

Newsweek, September 27, 2004, "Books: The Guy's a Real Know-It-All," p. 12.

People, October 4, 2004, "Dr. Know: Nerds Bow to Your New King," p. 128.

Psychology Today, November-December, 2004, review of The Know-It-All, p. 37.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 2004, review of The Know-It-All, p. 52; November 8, 2004, "Know-It-All on Tour," p. 18.

School Library Journal, February, 2005, Jamie Watson, review of The Know-It-All, p. 158.

Time, October 4, 2004, Joel Stein, "The Know-Everything Party: A.J. Jacobs Turns the Act of Reading the Entire Britannica into a Hilarious, Touching Memoir," p. 78.