About this item
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. Adults cleared their shelves in the belief that everything that was explainable was now effortlessly accessible in their living rooms. 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? All the Knowledge in the World is a history and celebration of those who created the most groundbreaking and remarkable publishing phenomenon of any age.
About the Author
British writer Simon Garfield is the author or editor of 20 books of non-fiction, including the international bestsellers Just My Type, On The Map and Mauve. His latest book is Dog's Best Friend: The Story Of An Unbreakable Bond.His other titles cover an appealingly diverse and unpredictable array of subjects, ranging from the award-winning history of Aids in Britain, The End of Innocence, to the hilarious oral history of the British entertainment The Wrestling. His celebration of letter writing, To The Letter, was one of the inspirations for the theatre show Letters Live with Benedict Cumberbatch, and spawned the BBC play My Dear Bessie with Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey. His other labour of love is A Notable Woman, the edited lifetime journals of the remarkable Jean Lucey Pratt, whom readers first met (when she was named Maggie Joy Blunt) in Garfield's three popular collections of diaries from the Mass Observation Archive. Jean began her journal in 1925 when she was 15, and maintained it until a few weeks before her death in 1986. Throughout she wrote lyrically, comically and honestly about her world and her friends (and particularly well about the disappoints of men) . She trained as a journalist and an architect, and ran a bookshop In Burnham Beeches for 20 years. Jean wrote well over a million words, and A Notable Woman, which contains about a quarter of her output, fulfils her long-standing dream that her writing would one day make it into print. Much of Garfield's work reflects a desire to reinterpret human history in an unusual and addictively readable way, and to look askance at topics we may often take for granted. To this end, Timekeepers examines the history of our ever-accelerating world, and In Miniature looks at our desire to bring that world down to size so that we may better understand it. His latest book is Dog's Best Friend: A Brief History Of An Unbreakable Bond, an engaging and moving investigation into our relationship with dogs. It begins with a simple question as he considers his own labrador - 'Why is he here? ' - and examines the reasons for domestication, and how we have named, trained, depicted and written about dogs throughout our history. The books also looks at the ability of dogs to heal and comfort us, the merits of designer dogs and performing dogs, and explains how we may best train a dog to provide a lifetime of happiness and love. Ahead of publication, the book has been highly praised by John Bradshaw and Andy Miller, among others. Simon Garfield was born in London in 1960. He lives with his wife Justine and dog Ludo near Hampstead Heath in London, and sometimes in St Ives, Cornwall. He misses live theatre and soccer, but still enjoys cycling and most things by Tracy Kidder, Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Nicholson Baker, Michael Chabon, Simon Armitage, The Kills, The National, Elvis Costello, Lloyle Carner and Jorja Smith.www.simongarfield.com
