BobHarris.com - Welcome newcomers

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

Blogs and news

Welcome newcomers

Tag it now -

Friday, 09 September 2005

Site traffic has exploded in the last week. I can't say I'm entirely happy about it, since it's in the wake of Katrina, and the mainstream press is generally such a damn echo chamber that we all have to scramble online to try to figure things out for ourselves. Still, I'd much rather have one-tenth the traffic and tens of thousands of my fellow citizens still alive.

And I never thought a sentence like that would ever exist. Even written in dry understatement.

[Long pause, looking for words. Finding none. Then, at last, finding one.]

Shit.

Horrible goddam couple of weeks, eh? And I'm just sitting on my ass in L.A., sending money and complaining and trying to figure out what to do next. I can't begin to imagine.

Back to the subject.

This is still a boutique operation, of course, nowhere near the size of the big blogs and not trying to be. This is just a place where I vent, kid around, ask questions, profess strange loves, and otherwise slap neurons in digressive fashion. Also, I occasionally post pictures of unusual places, cute animals, or politicians acting like assholes.

Someday, perhaps, I will find a picture of a politician acting like an asshole with a cute animal in an interesting place.

This will be, in Bush's phrase, the trifecta.

(Also, this will be a new twist on Clue: Tom DeLay condescending a Bichon Frise near the Great Pyramids! Hillary Clinton flipping off a Chinstrap Penguin in Sumatra! Etc.)

I digress.

We've had only a couple of tiny glitches on the upslope, and that's to the credit of Colin and Islandnet.com, whom I thank profusely.

Since I make my living writing other stuff that actually pays, and that takes time, I rarely post more than a thing or two a day. Still, if you're new to the site, I hope you'll bookmark the place and pop in regularly, even when entire major goddam cities of people are not being wasted due to mass incompetence.

Let us dare to dream.