BobHarris.com - Beauty in the West Indies

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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Beauty in the West Indies

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Tuesday, 13 March 2007

Genuine:

This teenager was walking and giggling with a girlfriend when saw me taking snapshots outside the cricket ground in St. Vincent. Just goofing around, she playfully called out for me to take her picture, posing as a joke for a few seconds while I made her friend laugh again by calling her bluff.

Could this young girl possibly be lovelier? I cannot imagine how.

Not quite so genuine:

The model in the window display is not Jessica Simpson, even though it looks almost exactly like Jessica Simpson. No, it's Hilary Swank, an actress with two Oscars, and who is absolutely gorgeous in her own right, without trying to look like someone else. But for the cosmetics ad, she's made to look remarkably like Jessica Simpson, who didn't know that Chicken of the Sea isn't chicken.

So the ideal of beauty here isn't the model herself, but someone else entirely -- someone with incomparably less to offer, and whose face isn't even real in the first place. (Jessica Simpson's eyes, lips, and nose have all reportedly been surgically altered.) And then somehow an airbrushed photo of all that -- literally, a fake of a fake of a fake -- is supposed to be reason to believe that some fragrant goo in a jar will suddenly transform you in some beneficial way. Which of course, it can't. So that's fake, too.

That's weird enough as it is.

Then put all that in a store window here in Basseterre, the capital of a country which is maybe one percent northern European.

That's not beautiful. It's just...bizarre.