Brainiac

Biography and memoir

First published: 2006
Print length: 269 pagesVillard, 2007

Description

Ken Jennings begins as an anonymous computer programmer with an appetite for facts and becomes a celebrated Jeopardy! champion. His account of that transformation opens into a wider investigation of why people collect, remember, and compete over seemingly minor knowledge. Moving from seventeenth-century coffeehouses and quiz books to television contests, campus quiz bowls, Boston pub trivia, and a massive annual competition in Wisconsin, Jennings meets communities organized around the pleasure of knowing the answer. Part memoir and part cultural history, Brainiac asks whether trivia measures intelligence, preserves meaningful information, or simply turns curiosity into play, while examining the deeper social purpose served by questions whose answers may appear to matter very little.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Journalistic · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Humorous · Playful · Reflective

Structure

Braided · Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Ideas · Information · Voice

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingCommunityKnowledge and truthTransformation

About Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings is an American author and game-show host whose writing developed from a long-standing interest in facts and the communities that form around them. A former software engineer, he became widely known after winning 74 consecutive games on Jeopardy! in 2004. His narrative nonfiction combines personal experience, reporting, and cultural history to examine how people collect, organize, and compete over knowledge. Brainiac places his own transition from programmer to quiz champion within a broader account of trivia culture, from coffeehouses and quiz bowls to pub competitions. Maphead applies a similar approach to geography, using encounters with collectors, geocachers, highpointers, and digital-map programmers to explore the connections among maps, memory, identity, and belonging. His prose is conversational, but his subjects are grounded in research and close attention to the habits that make specialized knowledge socially meaningful.

Maphead Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Villard
Language: English
ISBN: 9780812974997

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.