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
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“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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Main  Trebekistan FAQ
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Trebekistan FAQ |
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Monday, 04 September 2006 |
For questions about the rest of the site, visit the main FAQ.
These are the questions I hear most often (or, toward the bottom, I anticipate hearing most often), in roughly the order I usually hear them in. So, to save us all a little time:
I think I figured out who the Jane/David/Danny/etc. character is, and it's someone I've heard of from TV. Am I right?
Probably.
For the record, "Jane" is Jayne Mansfield, "David" is David Rockefeller, and "Danny" is Danny Gans, Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year every year since the invention of the billboard, apparently.
And I am lying through my teeth right there. If your guesses seem more reasonable, then they probably are. Rest assured, yes, if you think you know one of the characters from TV, then you probably do.
What kind of a car is Max?
Can't tell you, because I still drive him, and I value my privacy, believe it or not. But people apparently imagine him most frequently as a 1960s VW bug, the kind that sounds like a small aircraft taking off when it struggles to get on the interstate. That's close enough for me.
What’s Alex really like?
That’s
certainly not for me to say, since I’ve only spent a few hours around
him, usually in the middle of an oddly one-sided conversation while
trying to keep two other people from butting in. So I can’t pretend to
know, at least in any way glib enough to toss off in three sentences on
a website.
That said, I like him a great deal, and I do believe that if you read Prisoner of Trebekistan, you’ll probably feel like you have a satisfying answer to your question by the end.
Isn’t it true that (choose one)…?
- The players get something to study in advance
- The tape is edited, and players really have more time to think than it looks
- Producers tweak the categories to players’ various strengths
- etc.
Nope.
I’d never heard any of this crap until I’d actually been on the show
and people started asking me this stuff. The game is exactly what it
looks like, as perhaps 200,000 independent witnesses (studio audience
members plus contestants) over the years will happily verify. However, there's a lot of stuff that happens that you really don't see -- including the stuff happening between players' ears -- much of which is in the book.
Did you study? What kind of stuff?
Yes. Lots. And everything which seemed like it might come up.
I invite you to imagine just how insane that might have been, or whether I actually learned anything out of it, or how. But I'd like to think if you read Trebekistan, you'll still be surprised at the answers to all three. I was.
What’s Ken Jennings like?
By
all accounts I've heard: happily married, loving father, nice to
people, way more humble than anybody who did what he did has any right
to be. I don’t presume to call him a friend yet, but we’ve emailed a
bunch of times, what with our books coming out at the same time, and he seems pretty cool.
But didn’t Ken go off on Jeopardy! and write a bunch of nasty, ungrateful stuff?
Nah.
That rumor was started by some newspaper reporters too lazy to bother
reading what Ken actually wrote. If you go read the actual thing Ken
said, he was obviously kidding. But once the idea was out there, it
spread around the world in less than two days, apparently because some
reporters might feel a lot better about themselves if Ken were a jerk.
Too bad for them.
Is Ken the greatest player ever?
Hard
to say. Him or Brad Rutter probably. Brad beat Ken pretty soundly in
the 3-day final of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. But then
again, Ken had a bye to the finals and thus hadn’t played in months,
while Brad was already in fighting shape from several rounds of
competition. So who knows? Either way, there are probably about
another twenty or thirty players (Chuck Forrest, Frank Spangenberg,
Jerome Vered, Dan Melia, Pam Mueller, Mike Rooney, Leslie Frates, Robin
Carroll, etc.) who are about as good, just half a notch behind at most,
with everyone capable of beating anyone else on a given day.
Incidentally,
every single one of those people I just listed is incredibly nice. So
are almost all of the ones I didn’t. Honest.
Where do you rank in that list?
Notice
that I didn’t mention myself. I might belong in the half-notch down
group. Might not. I might be several notches back. Not really sure,
honestly.
Why were you in the 2002 Masters tournament at Radio City Music Hall, and not, say, Dan Melia or Jerome Vered?
The
producers’ decision, not mine. I’ll probably never know for sure.
There’s a bunch about how that felt for all concerned in the book,
incidentally.
The author's note says that some of the names in Prisoner of Trebekistan are changed. Which ones?
I changed the names of everyone except Jeopardy! personnel, Jeopardy!
players, and people in my personal life who are recognizable actors or
writers whom you would be able to easily identify anyway. My family,
ex-girlfriends, and other friends in the book are portrayed as
accurately as I can manage, but their names and many other details are
mangled enough to protect their privacy.
Did Jeopardy! vet or approve the text in any way?
Not
one word crossed their desks before it reached stores. I kept waiting
to come home and find the Sony Law Ninjas waiting for me, but they just
seem to have decided to let me do my thing. Pretty nice of them, too,
given that as a business the show is worth hundreds of millions, most
likely, and they've spent over two decades building the show's
reputation.
I guess they’ve been around me enough to know that I
like them and wasn’t going to write a savage tell-all. Also, I’m just
a contestant, and hardly close enough to the show to write a savage
tell-all in the first place. Not to mention that doing so would
destroy any chance I’d have to get back on the show and maybe get my
shot at Brad someday.
Did you get permission from Alex to bend his last name in the title?
Kind
of, but nothing in writing or anything. Last time I was
on the set, I mentioned that I had this book deal, and I was thinking of this particular
title. Alex fixed me with an amused but measuring look and asked
simply, “is it funny?” I mumbled something back like “maybe,” since I
hadn’t written a word yet. Then I recall he kind of nodded and
half-smiled, which I took as approval. That was the extent of the
interaction.
What does Alex think of the book?
I
have no idea. I’m not sure I’m even allowed to know. The Sony Law
Ninjas might come for me in the night. But he seems to have a really
good sense of humor.
Is there any good Jeopardy! gossip that isn’t in the book?
Hmm.
Well, I hear Alex still has his old mustache. He keeps it suspended in
a vacuum-sealed frozen jar. Sony built him sort of an airlock thingy
near the soundstage, and everyone who enters the studio usually
genuflects. Some people leave flowers.
Incidentally, if you’re
the New York Post or Fox News, I am kidding. Please do not write fake
stories about me the way you did to Ken.
Are you Jeopardy! guys really all friends?
Not
all, of course not. But groups of us do hang out, clustered in Los
Angeles, NYC, the SF bay area, and a few other clots. Some of the
local guys and I go up to CalTech every year for a QuizBowl
tournament. That’s fun. Every now and again we sneak in unannounced
at bar trivia nights. And Dan Melia and his wife Dara were over here
for dinner just the other day.
I am incredibly fortunate to have such extremely knowledgeable and yet lighthearted people in my life to call and rely on.
Best game show prize ever.
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