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  Juan Cole
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Traveling again |
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Sunday, 19 June 2005 |
Thanks to everybody who wrote in to send along good wishes
and such. Thanks. My arm is just getting back to where I can type
comfortably, so I'm way behind on emails, and I apologize. But thanks,
lots.
My strange affliction
seems to be almost vanquished, although since it began by cooking away
inside me for who knows how long, hell if I know. I'll probably be
just fine from here out. But don't sit too close to the computer, just
in case.
Kidding.
Which I elaborate because sometimes writing something absurd with a
straight face (or straight fingers perhaps) leads to
misunderstandings. So let me clarify the bit about spiders, below, for
the dozens of you who wrote in half-panicked: no, we don't all actually
swallow bugs in our sleep. I thought the absurdity of the idea
self-evident. Apparently not.
Lots of you now seem to be genuinely worried about your personal level
of involuntary spider intake. Be reassured, O my readers. You are not
eating spiders. Unless that's your thing. In which case, good on you,
stay away from me, and God Bless our America for the freedom to make
these private lifestyle choices.
Moving on. So.
Since there's still a tiny but finite chance I may still be rotting
from within, obviously the only responsible thing I can do is head
directly for as many airports as possible. So for the next few weeks
this blog will probably again become a chronicle of various travels.
Assuming any of them happen. I made the mistake of beginning this trip
on Air Canada, an airline so cutting-edge that the trip from from Los
Angeles to London yesterday took only 31 hours, achieving an average
airspeed rivaled only by stray balloons released at children's birthday
parties.
At one point, we spent three full hours trapped on a Montreal tarmac,
listening to distant, muffled banging noises emanating from deep in the
plane's bowels, our only distractions a lump of warm fromage, a video
of a leering Francophone inscrutably caressing handbags (this was some
sort of sales thing, but it was more interesting to pretend otherwise),
and the full complement of screeching babies mandated on all flights by
the International Convention on Implacable Screaming.
Thankfully, the pilot came on the speaker every
now and again to update us with the news that he had no idea whatsoever
when we would leave. This was a huge help.
The only DVD in my bag: The Aviator, featuring not one but two plane crashes. Because I am some kind of freaking genius, if you must know.
After the first two hours, as the flight attendants began feeding us for the third time, I began to wonder if Air Canada had abandoned the transportation industry altogether and decided to open a chain of extremely realistic failed-aircraft theme restaurants, to be positioned randomly around runways across North America, committed to force-feeding their customers while providing sullen incompetence in two languages.
The flagship location was certainly a success on all counts.
But I was wrong.
Eventually, the plane was pronounced dead, given last rites, doused with kerosene, and sent burning over a cliff while onlooking Vikings tried not to cry. (I exaggerate slightly here.) Soon, we were all marched into the terminal and instructed to
form a 300-person-long queue, at the head of which sat a polite woman
who eventually explained, many times and with remarkable good cheer, that the queue was completely unnecessary.
After this, we were invited to form another queue to take a shuttle
bus, which would take us to another queue at a hotel for a couple of
hours before returning to form another queue in precisely the same spot
where we had just been informed that no queue was originally
necessary. Which, inexplicably, we all did. After which we were
informed that no one on the replacement shift had the slightest idea
what our latest queue was about.
It went from there.
So I'm in Britain. I'm not dead. Thanks. That's pretty much it for now.
There are a dozen things I'd like to blog about -- the differences
between UK and US media perceptions on the Downing Street Memo, for
example, or the upcoming new TV show Make Me A Porn Star, which leaves only room for perhaps Prenatal Idol, a 24-edition of Big Brother: Gitmo, and Who Wants To Be An 80-Year Old Former Treblinka Guard Now Living Quietly In Iowa? as the last three rungs before we all start eating each others' flesh on live webcams -- but for now I need some sleep.
Thanks again for your patience.
PS: and the food on Air Canada made me almost wish the spider thing was true.
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