David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

remembers. “I started with the
Encyclopedia Britannica and then it
turned into both Britannica and the
Encyclopedia Americana.” Eisenstadt
made a list of every person, from Homer
to John F. Kennedy, whose life merited
more than one column in either
encyclopedia. That, he felt, was a rough
proxy for achievement. He now had a
list of 699 people. He then began
systematically tracking down
biographical information for everyone
on the list. “It took me ten years,”
Eisenstadt says. “I was reading all kinds
of foreign-language books, I went to
California and to the Library of
Congress, and to the genealogical library