Amos Urban Shirk

{{Short description|American encyclopedist (1890–1956)}}

Amos Urban Shirk ({{circa}} 1890 – October 20, 1956) was an American businessman, author and reader of encyclopedias.

As a businessman he worked in the food industry. He wrote Marketing Through Food Brokers, published in 1939 by McGraw-Hill. He invented a synthetic chicle and introduced vitamin capsules to grocery stores.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1956/10/22/archives/a-urban-shirk-sales-specialist-merchandising-authority-in-food.html |title=A. URBAN SHIRK, SALES SPECIALIST; Merchandising Authority in Food Industry Dies at 66—Invented Synthetic Chicle |work=The New York Times |date=October 22, 1956 |accessdate=May 8, 2017 |url-access=subscription }}

He was also renowned as a prodigious reader. Shirk read the entire 23-volume 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica from cover to cover in four and a half years, reading on average three hours per evening, and taking two to six months per volume.{{cite magazine |title=Reader |magazine=The New Yorker |date=March 3, 1934 |page=17 |url=http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1934-03-03#folio=016 |url-access=subscription}} As of 1934, he had begun reading the 14th edition, saying he found it a "big improvement" over the 11th, and saying that "most of the material had been completely rewritten".

Shirk did not limit himself to Britannica. He also read Henry Smith Williams's 24-volume Historians' History of the World, which took him two years, as well as an 18-volume set of works by Alexandre Dumas, a 32-volume set of Honoré de Balzac, and a 20-volume set of Charles Dickens.

Shirk had other hobbies including painting and record collecting.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10785659/a_urban_shirk/ |title=Encyclopedist Says: Read to Understand War Events |date=August 9, 1942 |work=The Sunday Times-Signal |location=Zanesville, Ohio |page=9 |via=Newspapers.com|accessdate=May 5, 2017}} {{free access}}