A J Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help. He is also editor at large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine. His first book is called The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon & Schuster, 2004). The memoir — which spent two months on the New York Times bestseller list — chronicles the 18 months Jacobs spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a quest to learn everything in the world. After trying to improve his mind, he turned to his spirit. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007) tells of his attempt to follow the hundreds of rules in the Good Book. It spent three months on the NYT bestseller list. In 2012, Jacobs completed his mind-spirit-body self-improvement trinity with Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. It is the tale of his quest to be as healthy as humanly possible for which he revamped his diet, exercise regimen, sleep schedule, sex life, posture and more. He wrote the book on a treadmill desk (It took him about 1,200 miles). He also published a collection of essays called My Life as an Experiment: One Man’s Humble Quest to Improve Himself (2010). The book contains experiments featuring George Washington’s rules of life, marital harmony, marital disharmony, multitasking and nudity – not in that order. It includes the Esquire piece ‘My Outsourced Life,’ which also appeared in Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek. In addition to his books, Jacobs written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, New York magazine and Dental Economics magazine, one of the top five magazines about the financial side of tooth care. He has given several TED talks, including ones about living biblically, creating a one-world family, and living healthily. He is a periodic commentator on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, where he dispenses world-shaking historical trivia, including segments on tennis, royalty, and congress behaving badly (the 19th century Vermont lawmaker who spat chewing tobacco in his opponent’s face). He writes a bi-weekly advice column for Esquire.com called “My Huddled Masses” Jacobs crowdsources the advice, asking his 120,000 Facebook followers for their insights on etiquette, moral dilemmas and how to deal with overabundant arm hair. He writes another advice column for Mental Floss magazine in which he tries to make readers feel better by describing daily life past centuries. The good old days were terrible (“mind-bogglingly dirty, painful, fetid, smelly, sickly and boring”). He is also a columnist for the LinkedIn Influencers program. His pieces include ‘The Six Most Important Business Lessons from All of History‘ and An Entrepreneur’s Most Powerful Tool: Self-Delusion. Jacobs grew up in New York City. His father is a lawyer who holds the world record for the most footnotes in a law review article (4,812). His wife works for a highbrow scavenger hunt called Watson Adventures. He lives in New York with his family.