The Intellectual Devotional - a daily dose of knowledge modeled after religious and inspirational readings - debuted in 2006 and was an instant best-seller. David Kidder, who is an entrepreneur and marketing genius and not a professor, and Noah Oppenheim, a Today show producer no less, followed its success with The Intellectual Devotional: American History. We are now anxiously awaiting the fall release of The Intellectual Devotional: Modern Culture.

Wow. Are we going to sound smart, or what?

These books are divided into seven days and 52 weeks. Each entry runs for only 3 to 5 minutes, and the range of information is enormous. You never know what you're going to hear next: prime numbers, the musical scale, arguments for the existence of God or Athens vs. Sparta.

And these are not randomly assembled factoids. Each topic is discussed in (modest) detail and in clear, uncluttered language.

Listening to these books on tape does offer a different approach than the usual devotional texts require - where perhaps you would read an entry each morning upon waking or one each night before sleep. I made it through a month of entries during one of my daily commutes!