"The audacious, improbable tale of 20th century American hucksterism, outlandish daring, and vision that resurrected a dying Encyclopedia Britannica in collaboration with a floundering London Times, its astonishing success that changed publishing and that produced the Britannica's eleventh edition (published between 1910 and 1911), the most revered edition of English-language encyclopedias (all 44 million words), considered by many to be "the last great work of the age of reason" (Hans Koening, the New Yorker)"--