International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, 7-Volume Set

The urge to collect and catalogue is as old as humanity itself. Perhaps there is something about being human that insists on scholars pausing from time to time to gather up everything they know and set it down en masse. Certainly, encyclopedias have existed, pretty much in the form we know them now, for at least two millennia. Furthermore, most dictionary definitions of the term ‘encyclopedia’ contain phrases like ‘complete education’, ‘comprehensive’, and ‘covering all knowledge’. Roget’s Thesaurus likewise directs those looking for synonyms and antonyms of ‘encylopedical’ to the headings ‘generality’ and ‘knowledge’. In short, anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of a subject simply knows it all