Everything Explained That Is Explainable
is the audacious, utterly improbable story of the publication of the Eleventh Edition of the legendary
Encyclopædia Britannica
. It is the tale of a young American entrepreneur who rescued a dying publication with the help of a floundering newspaper, and in so doing produced a series of books that forever changed the face of publishing. Thanks to the efforts of 1,500 contributors, among them a young staff of university graduates as well as some of the most distinguished names of the day, the Eleventh Edition combined scholarship and readability in a way no previous encyclopedia had (or ever has again). Denis Boyles’s work of cultural history pulls back the curtain on the 44-million-word testament to the age of reason that has profoundly shaped the way we see the world.