NPR Provides Forum for EB Author

If NPR is the promised land of high-brow book publicity, what do you call an author who snags not one shot at public radio's upscale, book-loving audience, but a recurring gig to talk about a book that he hasn't even written yet?

You might call him lucky. But in this case, it's better to be smart than lucky. "I'm trying to be the smartest man in the world," says the author, A.J. Jacobs, a senior editor at Esquire who's writing a book for Simon & Schuster based on his experiences reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica cover to cover. All 44 million words of it. And every month or so, NPR invites Jacobs to share what he's learned.

A year away from publication, Jacobs's book, The Know It All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, is already generating buzz for Encyclopaedia Britannica company. The attention couldn't come at a better time for Britannica, which is trying hard to become a bigger presence in the trade book market, publishing one-volume titles and hiring a new trade distributor.

Those NPR spots also have S&S in the enviable position of having to fend off other national media until nearer to the book's publication date, September 2004, said his editor, Rob Weisbach. The two have worked together before. Back in 1994, Weisbach, then at Bantam, was Jacobs's editor on The Two Kings: Jesus and Elvis. "He happens to be one of the funniest people I've ever worked with," said Weisbach, whose credits include books by Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres.

Funny is fine, but will he succeed in his quest to become the smartest man in the world? "I'm not sure yet," admits Jacobs, who is now slogging through the S volumes. "I will definitely report back when I'm up to Z."