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Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs
Paperback
Biographies GeneralGames & Activities General21st Century United States History
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ISBN13: 9780812974997
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: Oct 30 2007
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.62 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.16
Language: English
Insightful, informative, and written with a strong dose of humor and humility. . . . I loved this book.--Will Shortz, crossword editor, The New York Times
Ken Jennings is trivia's undisputed king--and as he traces his rise from anonymous computer programmer to nerd folk icon, he explores his newly conquered kingdom: the world of trivia itself.
Trivia, he has found, is centuries older than his childhood obsession with it. Whisking us from the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century London to the Internet age, Jennings chronicles the ups and downs of the trivia fad: the quiz book explosion of the Jazz Age; the rise, fall, and rise again of TV quiz shows; the nostalgic campus trivia of the 1960s; and the 1980s, when Trivial Pursuit(R) again made it fashionable to be a know-it-all. Jennings also investigates the shadowy demimonde of today's trivia subculture, guiding us on a tour of trivia across America. He goes head-to-head with the blowhards and diehards of the college quiz-bowl circuit, the slightly soused faithful of the Boston pub trivia scene, and the raucous participants in the annual Q&A marathon in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, The World's Largest Trivia Contest. And, of course, he takes us behind the scenes of his improbable 75-game run on Jeopardy! But above all, Brainiac is a love letter to the useless fact. (Who knew that there's a crater on Venus named after Laura Ingalls Wilder? Ken Jennings, that's who.) Engaging and erudite, Brainiac is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and geeky obsession--in a word, trivia.
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