Breaking dawn meyers headline ebook banner

Tell a friend about:
Brainiac ebook here

Other Crafts, Hobbies & Home Categories
Chess (16) Cooking (780) Crafts for Children (19) Gambling (37) Games (212) Gardening (58) House & Home (216) Pets (416) Video & Electronic (51)

Fiction eBooks
General Fiction Romance Erotica Fantasy Science Fiction Mystery & Detective Suspense & Thrillers Action & Adventure Children's Fiction Classics & Drama Literary & Poetry Download Free eBooks

Last Viewed

Download Free eBooks Readers
Mobipocket Reader Microsoft MS Reader Adobe Reader Palm eReader
To browse or view on: Pocket PC PDA Palm PDA Handspring PDA Wireless Phone Personal PC

Talk To Us

If you notice any site errors or have an idea, we'd love to hear it no matter how small.

Your first time?

We recommend you download one of our test eBooks to make sure you have the right settings on your computer.

For the most part, you'll find the same ebooks at each virtual online ebookstore, just differences in price. Happily, I found Diesel-eBooks to be the exception to the rule. Not only did they have most of the titles I've found at other sites online, they had a nice selection I hadn't seen anywhere else, in particular, the complete collection of original Sherlock Holmes novels all in one compendium, and in Palm eReader format, just how I like.

James Booth
Computing Unplugged

Home > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Games > Brainiac-eBook

Brainiac

Jennings, Ken

Our price:

Discount next order:

Your effective price:

Adobe

$ 8.94
$-0.31
$ 8.63
$ 0.31

Wishlist

Palm

$ 9.36
$-0.33
$ 9.03
$ 0.33

Wishlist

M-soft

$ 9.63
$-0.34
$ 9.29
$ 0.34

Wishlist

Mobi

$14.14
$-0.49
$13.65
$ 0.49

Wishlist

receive alert on new titles by this author

Brainiac

One day back in 2003, Ken Jennings and his college buddy Earl did what hundreds of thousands of people had done before: they auditioned for Jeopardy! Two years, 75 games, 2,642 correct answers, and over $2.5 million in winnings later, Ken Jennings emerged as trivia’s undisputed king. Brainiac traces his rise from anonymous computer programmer to nerd folk icon. But along the way, it also explores his newly conquered kingdom: the world of trivia itself.

Jennings had always been minutiae-mad, poring over almanacs and TV Guide listings at an age when most kids are still watching Elmo and putting beans up their nose. But 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 today’s trivia subculture, guiding us on a tour of trivia hotspots 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. What marsupial has fingerprints that are indistinguishable from human ones?* What planet has a crater on it named after Laura Ingalls Wilder?** What comedian had the misfortune to be born with the name “Albert Einstein”?*** Jennings also ponders questions that are a little more philosophical: What separates trivia from meaningless facts? Is being good at trivia a mark of intelligence? And is trivia just a waste of time, or does it serve some not-so-trivial purpose after all?

Uproarious, silly, engaging, and erudite, this book is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and nerdy obsession–in a word, trivia.

* The koala
** Venus
*** Albert Brooks

From the Hardcover edition.

Adobe Settings

Copying:	Not allowed
Printing:	Not allowed

Title of ebook: Brainiac
ISBN: 9781588365521
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Internet download file size: 1168 kb
Released online for download: 09-12-2006
Author of eBook: Jennings, Ken

Brainiac

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

Chapter One

What is Ambition?

Here's some trivia for you. The red rock country of southern Utah is red for the same reason that the planet Mars has a pinkish tinge when you see it in the night sky: both are loaded with iron oxide, a.k.a. ordinary household rust. The shadows of these red desert crags are lengthening toward our car as it pulls into a dusty gas station on the Utah-Arizona border. The air smells of diesel fumes and sagebrush when I open the passenger-side door. My friend Earl Cahill unfolds himself from the driver's seat, relieved we've made it to this, our last chance at gas for fifty miles.

Earl is my old college roommate, and though he's a remarkable six-foot-nine in height, he's one of those giants who hope that by holding t ... read full excerpt from Brainiac ebook