BobHarris.com - 7 Wonders

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

My Five-Continent Midlife-Crisis Around-The-World Adventure

This set of posts/letters home/panicked reports of wild animals/memoirs originally appeared on Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World in late 2003 and 2004.

To whet your appetite, here's the chart I compiled at the end of the various distances covered via various forms of transit... if you're not sure yet what a tuk-tuk or a travellator is, neither was I. To find out which one of them can easily get you killed, read on.

Airplanes	32964 miles
Rental cars	2958 miles
Taxis	295 miles
Buses	271 miles
Trains	240 miles
Subways	40 miles
Mountain bike	28 miles
Hitchhiking	10 miles
Cruise ship	10 miles
Monorails	7 miles
Elevated train	5 miles
Ferry boat	3 miles
Suspended gondolas	5 miles
Bum boat	5 miles
Motor scooter	2 miles (?)
Elevators	1.5 miles
Funicular cable train	1 mile
Kayak	3/4 mile
Travellators	3/4 mile
Tuk-tuk	1/2 mile
Street luge	1/2 mile
Chair lift	1/2 mile
Swimming	1/2 mile
Water taxis	1/2 mile
Escalators	1/4 mile
Running from baboon, screaming	50 feet
Falling off of things, various	30 feet
Ostrich, attempting to ride, stupidly	4 feet

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Item Title

Monday, 13 December 2004

London: Midlife Begins, Time Marches On

Monday, 13 December 2004

Cape Town: Just Like An American City... That Speaks Eleven Languages

Monday, 13 December 2004

Driving Across South Africa: Land Of Giant Obvious Metaphors Which Can Kill You

Monday, 13 December 2004

Singapore: Country Line Dancing & Mass Cleaning Activities

Monday, 13 December 2004

Malaysia: Burkhas in Starbucks

Monday, 13 December 2004

Bangkok: Mind Your Head

Monday, 13 December 2004

Bali: The Land That Isn't There

Monday, 13 December 2004

Sydney: Like A Prisoner Episode, But Better

Monday, 13 December 2004

New Zealand: Middle Earth, Middle Class, Middle America

Monday, 13 December 2004

Rarotonga: Screensaver Island

Monday, 13 December 2004

Los Angeles: My Life As Old Clothes

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Almost Seven Wonders ( 5 items )

This series of posts was originally sent to This Modern World in the summer of 2004, as I visited the sites of six of Pliny's original "seven wonders" of the ancient world:

The Temple of Zeus at Olympia
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Mausoleum at Helicarnassus
The Temple of Artemis near Ephesus
The Great Pyramids of Egypt, and
The Pharos of Alexandria.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which supposedly sat in what is now smack-dab in the center of Iraq, got a pass for now, thanks all the same.

Along the way, I also got to visit the Acropolis in Athens, the excavation site which is supposedly ancient Troy, Istanbul, modern Cairo, and a whole bunch of neat stuff.

The entries here aren't specific to the above sites (and barely even mention several), but are simply a few short notes sent home in the middle of all the running around. I'm still putting together all the notes and emails and photos from the main events, which I hope to get published as a book in the coming year.