In the late 1930s anyone bold enough to challenge the proposition that John Kieran of The New York Times wrote the most learned and agreeable prose ever seen on a sports page would have faced the wrath of some heavyweight Kieran devotees, among them Yale University's William Lyon Phelps, America's doyen of humane letters. Moreover, at the popular level Kieran enjoyed a national reputation not only as an authority on sports but also as the man who knew something about almost everything, America's "walking encyclopedia." In large measure Kieran's apotheosis from respected sports columnist to the country's most celebrated polymath was the product of his tenure on one of the favorite radio programs of the period, Information Please. Although not the first quiz show to be aired, Information Please was the first to adopt a format of inviting listeners to stump a panel of experts rather than having...