All the Knowledge in the World
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Author | Simon Garfield |
|---|---|
| Subject | Encyclopedia history |
| Published | 23 February 2023 |
| Publisher | William Morrow and Company, Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| ISBN | 978-1-4746-1077-3 |
All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia is a 2023 nonfiction book by Simon Garfield, a British journalist and nonfiction author. It covers the history of encyclopedias from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, with a focus on Encyclopædia Britannica.
Garfield arranged the twenty-six chapters alphabetically, from "Ahh, Here Comes Andrew Bell", through the alphabet to "Zeitgeist" and "Zywiec", each chapter a few separate vignettes that need not be read in order.[1][2]
More than 270 years after Denis Diderot stated that the goal of an encyclopedia is "to assemble all the knowledge scattered on the surface of the earth," encyclopedia-inclined people are still working on the task.[2] Garfield argues that encyclopedias have gotten bigger and bigger—more words, entries, volumes, and rival brands of encyclopedias. Because old sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica are worth less than the cost of delivery, Garfield calls them "the fastest depreciating assemblage of information ever known."[1] "What is and isn’t valued knowledge, and how best to present it, has been the recurring headache of every encyclopedia editor in history," he writes.[3]
Garfield’s focus on Britannica, which has operated since 1768, led The New York Times to call it his "de facto protagonist."[2][4] He notes that the encyclopedia giant paid experts to be sole authors of articles about their topic of study; for example, Sigmund Freud on psychoanalysis, Marie Curie on radium, Alfred Hitchcock on film production. Britannica estimated that it paid $32 million to create its 15th edition, not including printing costs, which is why Garfield calls Britannica "the largest single private investment in publishing history."[1]
He discusses the Yongle Dadian, a massive document with 11,095 manuscript volumes, commissioned by emperor Zhu Di of China’s Ming dynasty.[3]