Legendary editor Clifton Fadiman was once commissioned to assist with the compilation of a 700-page Treasury of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A perfectionist, Fadiman read every issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica -- going back 200 years!

[Fadiman is said to have read eighty pages per hour and to have remembered most of what he read.]

[The first volume of the first Encyclopedia Britannica (A-B) was published in 1771. The span covered by the next two volumes? C-Z!]