Few books begin by drawing the reader’s attention to a general lack of enthusiasm for their subject matter Simon Garfield’s good-humored history of the encyclopedia All the Knowledge of the World does

Simon Garfield’s All the Knowledge of the World is a lighthearted history of the encyclopedia, which begins by acknowledging the lack of enthusiasm for the subject matter. Garfield’s primary research materials are old editions of Britannica, which he obtains from eBay resellers for a cheap price. The few remaining readers of hard-copy encyclopedias are not using them as intended, with one American journalist reading all thirty-two volumes of the fifteenth Britannica from start to finish as a novelty endurance test. Garfield argues that print encyclopedias deserve more love and attention, taking delight in the nuggets of treasure he unearths and sharing them generously. He highlights the contributions made by intellectual celebrities of the day, which have not survived into the Wikipedian era, and illuminates the hidden histories of women whose uncredited labour made possible earlier editions. Encyclopedias mirror the values of their times, and Garfield shows how they encode the prejudices of their creators