It's All Relative

by A. J. Jacobs
337 pgs 

In A. J. Jacobs’s latest book, It’s All Relative - Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree, he undertakes the quest for organizing the world’s largest ever family reunion, a global family reunion. Why would a self-described “introverted misanthrope” undertake such an endeavor? The idea grew out of his desire to instill in his children an understanding of where they came from and a sense of belonging in the world. He also believed that if he could somehow get everyone to realize they were all related to each other, if you go back far enough, that people might treat each other with a little more kindness and respect.

In true Jacobsian fashion, Jacobs immerses himself in the practice of genealogy for an entire year leading up to The Global Family Reunion, which took place in New York (and remotely in dozens of other locations throughout the world) in June of 2015.

Jacobs recounts countless hours of researching his own family line, along with those of his wife’s family and other relatives. He interviews experts in the field and attends conferences held throughout the country. He spends a lot of time researching other topics related to the idea of family, and discusses the various relationships formed throughout the world that form a family.

He becomes a subject-matter expert on DNA testing, and shines a light on the pros and cons of that increasingly-popular practice. He researches marriage between closely-related people, and why that has occurred throughout history, and its effects on the global family tree.

Jacobs then does what he does best, and what has garnered him thousands of fans and helped him sell so many books, he writes about his quest in such a way that is humorous, interesting, and entertaining. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Interview with A.J. Jacobs

If I were to pick an author I think I would most enjoy having lunch with, A.J. Jacobs would definitely be in consideration. From his books he comes across as very funny, unassuming, and dare I say a little unbalanced? He is the editor at large of Esquire magazine who has written four books, all of which I highly recommend. Three of his books have chronicled his efforts of self-improvement and one of them, a series of month-long experiments in which he used himself as the guinea pig.

His books will make you laugh and sometimes make you squirm as he boldly subjects himself to situations that your average self aware individual would never consider. Here is a real quick interview with the author:

You set out initially to improve yourself mentally, spiritually, and physically. Now that you've addressed all three aspects of your life, how successful do you think you were? Do you think you're a significantly different person today having gone through those years of self-improvement, compared to the person you'd otherwise be?

Well, part of being a better person is being humble. So I don’t want to say I’m the Most Improved Person in the World. (Or that I’m the Humblest Person in the World). But I will say, my life has changed in hundreds of ways, and most of them for the better.

Numerous times for your books you knowingly placed yourself in situations that a normal man would never have subjected himself to, (i.e. attending a pole dancing aerobics class, your month of radical honesty, and your month of abiding by every command your wife could come up with). But when you write about those situations, you write about them as if you don't have any reservations. Was that really the way you felt going into them? If not, was there any one thing you were most anxious about subjecting yourself to?

I do get nervous. In fact, sometimes it can almost be an out of body experience. When I practiced Radical Honesty and said whatever was on my mind, part of me was observing myself with disbelief. But I put myself into these situations because they are usually fascinating, and usually end up improving my life. Even pole dancing is healthy.

Many of the experiments you've subjected yourself to also had a significant, and not necessarily enjoyable impact on your wife as well. Is it safe to assume she demands significant gifts for her birthday, anniversary, Valentine's Day, etc? Did she ever veto any of your plans?

Yes, my wife has the patience of Job. Or actually more patience. I learned from studying the Bible that Job actually gets kind of short-tempered and cranky. Though you can’t really blame the guy. Anyway, my wife is patient, and does receive significant gifts. In my book The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as An Experiment,  I let her get a little payback. I spent a month doing whatever she said. Essentially, I was her servant. She became drunk with power, it was kind of scary. As for vetoes, yes, she’s nixed quite a few. Several readers, for instance, suggested that we reenact all the positions in the kama sutra. She put the kibosh on that quite quickly.

In your latest book Drop Dead Healthy you took the approach of trying to achieve perfect health for one part of your body at a time. If there was only one piece of health advice that you think everyone needs to know about and implement into their life, what would it be?

If I had to choose one, I’d say: Stop sitting! The research on the effects of sedentary life scared the bejesus out of me. Sitting for more than four hours a day raises the risk of heart disease by up to 60 percent. If I’m sitting, I try to get up every half hour and walk around for a couple of minutes. I actually took it to the extreme: I bought a treadmill, balanced my laptop on top of it, and wrote my book while walking. It took me about 1,200 miles.

What's next? Are you working on a new book currently? If so, can you tell me anything about it?

My kids want me to write a book about Spending a Year Eating Nothing But Candy. They say they would join me in this quest. Not sure that would be a big seller. I do have a few half-baked or quarter-baked ideas, but I haven’t settled on which one yet. I think taking a month off is probably healthy.


Thanks very much and I look forward to whatever you come up with next.

Drop Dead Healthy - One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection

by A. J. Jacobs

A. J. Jacobs is not the type of person who takes his goals lightly. Several years ago he made a goal to improve himself mentally, spiritually, and physically. He chronicled each of those self-improvements its own book. For his mental improvement he set out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year; which he wrote about in The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. For his spiritual improvement he devoted a year of his life to living every commandment in the Bible; which he wrote about in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. With this book, he completes his trifecta of self-improvement and focuses on his body. For a little over two years Jacobs spends every waking moment and conscious thought on how he can achieve perfect health.

To start out, this book is not the memoir of a 600lb man who shed the weight and now walks around in a saggy suit of skin nine times larger than his body. Jacobs was not obese. He was what he called "'skinny fat’ — a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat." So the book is not about weight loss. Instead Jacobs chooses to spend a couple weeks at a time trying to obtain optimum health for one specific part of his body at a time: heart, lungs, stomach, immune system, feet, teeth, bladder, ears, etc.

The true joy of this book, along with his previous ones, is Jacobs's self-deprecating sense of humor as he describes the various health experiments he subjects himself (and by association, his saintly wife) to. Like buying a device to be placed over the toilet bowl, which allowed him to achieve the squatting position he learns is the most ideal for the healthiest removal of waste. Or jury-rigging a treadmill into a writing desk so that he could be walking while writing the book (he walked 1,200 miles at a 2 mile/hour pace).

Jacobs tries veganism, Atkins, juice cleanses, along with dozens of other diets. He tries Cross Fit, anti-gravity yoga, and there's a very entertaining account of him attending a pole dancing workout class where he was the only man among fifty women wearing high heels, and sporting an inordinate amount of cleavage.

The book is entertaining and it's informative. It made me laugh and it made me think about the way I treat my own body. It's not a life changing book, and I don't think Jacobs meant it to be. But I challenge anyone to read it and not come away with some ideas for at least a few changes they're going to make in order to take better care of their body.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆