Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

ISBN: 0812974999

Author: Jennings, Ken

Condition: New

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A witty, charming, and engaging dive into trivias colorful history, from Americas highest-earning game show contestant of all time and host of Jeopardy!Insightful, informative, and written with a strong dose of humor and humility. . . . I loved this book.-Will Shortz, crossword editor, The New York TimesKen Jennings is trivias 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 again made it fashionable to be a know-it-all.Jennings also investigates the shadowy demimonde of todays 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 Worlds 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 theres a crater on Venus named after Laura Ingalls Wilder? Ken Jennings, thats who.) Engaging and erudite, Brainiac is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and geeky obsession-in a word, trivia.