‘Witty and geekily eclectic’ The Times<\/i>
An erudite and amusing exploration’ Financial Times<\/i>
‘Full of jawdropping facts’ Mail on Sunday<\/i>
‘Remarkable . . . engrossing’ Sunday Times<\/i>
‘A pleasure’ Spectator<\/i>
‘An infectiously enthusiastic history’ Times Literary Supplement<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Now these huge books sell for almost nothing on eBay while we derive information from our phones. What have we lost in this transition? All the Knowledge in the World <\/i>tracks the story from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print. It exposes how encyclopaedias reflect our changing attitudes towards sexuality, race and technology, uncovers a fascinating part of our shared past and wonders whether the promise of complete knowledge – that most human of ambitions – will forever be beyond our grasp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The encyclopaedia 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. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi helped millions of children with their homework. But now these huge books gather dust, and sell for almost nothing on eBay, and we derive our information from our phones and computers, apparently for free. What have we lost in this transition? And how did we tell the progress of our lives in the past? This book presents a history and celebration of those who created the most ground-breaking and remarkable publishing phenomenon of any age. It tracks the story from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[142],"product_tag":[1113,892],"class_list":["post-100280","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-general-non-fiction","product_tag-general-encyclopaedias","product_tag-history-specific-events-topics","pa_book_author-garfield-simon","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-030-9-edition23","pa_imprint-weidenfeld-nicolson","pa_language-english","pa_pages-9468","pa_publisher-weidenfeld-nicolson","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","onbackorder","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n