BobHarris.com - A London Observer

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

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A London Observer

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Saturday, 30 October 2004

Not really a full-on travel entry, just a few thoughts on what the U.S. election looks like from over here. And anything else that comes out, since travel always makes you see stuff.

UK TV and newspaper reports routinely refer to the electoral college as "bizarre" or "strange." Which, of course, it is.

One clear difference between the GOP and Dems emerges in all the allegations of electoral fraud: the GOP complaints are all about people who don't deserve something getting it, and the Dems are all concerned about people who deserve something not getting it.

Seems like the two sets of priorities in a nutshell, doesn't it?

The Dick Cheney/Halliburton corruption story looks to be mostly above-the-fold here. Not sure what kind of play it's getting back home.

The idea that votes are simply too complex to count, or that who's eligible to vote is considered some sort of difficult question, in the same country that gave the world penny-precise ATMs in every corner of the globe, seems to be widely perceived as simply not sane. Again, rightly so.

Fun bit of odd: David Soul -- yes, the Starsky & Hutch guy -- is starring here in Jerry Springer: The Opera in the West End. I'd cite this as two examples of the horrors of exporting U.S. culture... except this is a British production in a British theatre with a British audience. Also, apparently, it's actually funny as hell. So I can't complain. Just... what a strange billboard to see on the ride in from Heathrow.

Cultural differences: One of the longest-running shows on TV here is a game show called Countdown. Try to imagine this on American television: a paunchy, balding, bespectacled host asks two contestants on a plain-looking set to find the longest word they can amongst strings of 9 random letters, displayed on simple cardboard by a 43-year-old model who would look more at home doing news than an episode of Baywatch. Then two experts with a big dictionary chime in, with frequent discussion of particularly arcane usages. That's it. For an hour. Occasionally the game is interrupted with a math challenge, in which contestants try to reach a random 3-digit number by performing operations on six random smaller numbers. Carol dutifully writes up the equations in magic marker.

Imagine that being popular for 22 years.

Oh, and Arsenal (my favorite soccer team) finally lost a game this week, ending what was truly one of the most amazing streaks in sports history. I mention this because it means nothing to about 85% of our readers, and that's a shame. If America was more connected to the rest of the world... we'd all be a lot safer.

UPDATE: Irrelevant but true: attended today's Arsenal match v. Southampton up at Highbury, which is very much like the English soccer version of Fenway Park. (It's also fair to compare Arsenal to the Red Sox, with Man U as the hated Yankees.) And it turns out... David Soul is also a rabid Arsenal fan. So. I hereby cut him perpetual Slack, and certify Jerry Springer: The Opera as the finest evening of theatre since Maury Povich: The Gothic Tragedy.