Prologue
1. Plymouth 1896
2. The adman
3. Printing House Square
4. The Cairo correspondent
5. The assistant manager
6. The American scheme
7. Ten
8. A dinner for Mr. Chisholm
9. The supplemental volumes
10. Half a million goats
11. Anglosphere
12. Plan B : a book war
13. Chaos
14. High Holborn
15. The single organism
16. War and peace
17. The dreadnaught launch
18. Offenses
19. Postscript

'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