How Wikipedia Works
And How You Can Be a Part of It
Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates
September 2008, 536 pp.
No Starch Press
http://www.nostarch.com
US $29.95
ISBN-13 978-1-59327-176-3

Encyclopedias, those big books that have attempted to summarize all human knowledge, have been around since the time of the ancient Greeks. Pliny the Elder probably had an easy time of it, since the sum of all human knowledge was a bit smaller in his day than in ours. Denis Diderot, a now obscure French philosopher who lived in the 18th century, gave encyclopedia writing the ol’ college try. Most MyMac.com readers would be more familiar with Funk and Wagnalls, the World Book, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, if not their door-to-door salesmen.

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