A. J. Jacobs

Arnold Stephen "A. J." Jacobs, Jr. (born March 20, 1968) is an American journalist, author, and lecturer best known for writing about his lifestyle experiments. He is the editor at large for Esquire and has worked for the Antioch Daily Ledger and Entertainment Weekly.

Early life

Jacobs was born in New York City to secular Jewish parents Arnold Jacobs Sr., a lawyer, and Ellen Kheel. He has one sister, Beryl Jacobs. He was educated at The Dalton School and Brown University.

Career

Jacobs has said that he sees his life as a series of experiments in which he immerses himself in a project or lifestyle, for better or worse, then writes about what he learned. The genre is often called immersion journalism or "stunt journalism".

In one of these experiments ("stunts") Jacobs read all 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He wrote about it in his humorous book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (2004). In the book, he also chronicles his personal life along with various endeavors like joining Mensa. The book spent eight weeks on The New York Times best seller's list.NPR's Weekend Edition ran a series of segments featuring the unusual facts Jacobs learned in each letter. Jacobs also wrote a column for mental floss magazine describing the highlights of each volume. The book received positive reviews in The New York Times,Time magazine and USA Today. However, Joe Queenan panned it in the New York Times Book Review. Queenan called the book "corny, juvenile, smug, tired" and "interminable" and characterized Jacobs as "a prime example of that curiously modern innovation: the pedigreed simpleton." Four months later, Jacobs responded in an essay entitled “I Am Not a Jackass”.