He's Jewish like Olive Garden is Italian

Book Review: "Drop Dead Healthy" by A.J. Jacobs

 

My Jewish guilt wants me to make clear that "Jewish like Olive Garden is Italian" is not my line- it belongs to A.J. Jacobs, the very funny, nebbish-y, Woody Allen-y author of Drop Dead Healthy.

He is an editor at large for Esquire, and previously wrote two fairly well-known books: The Know It All, about improving his mind by reading the entire encyclopedia, and The Year of Living Biblically, about improving his spirit by following all of the biblical tenets for a year. This book is the last in the series, and focuses on improving his body.

This man got beat up a lot in middle school.
From amazon.com

The premise is a fun one, and Jacobs is an easy-to-read author. He touches on a really broad range of topics, from trying a caveman-style workout in Central Park, to rigging his treadmill so he could walk and type at the same time (he covered 1000 miles while writing the book), to wearing a helmet at all times for safety, to taking hormone dosages to address an unusually low testosterone level. He also touched on a wide range of diets, including a  super-low calorie diet, the raw diet, and even focusing on chewing each bite a certain number of times.

The anecdotes are usually entertaining, especially when he talks about his wife and the gimlet eye with which she reviews his various out-there activities.

But as someone with a genuine interest in some of these topics, I felt underwhelmed by the extent of research or analysis he put into them. There's certainly a line to walk between providing a thorough review of something and boring your readers to death with details, but by the end of the book I found myself skipping over chapters that weren't already of interest. His cursory overview of whatever topic (see Chapter 23, "The Quest for Magic Fingers") wasn't going to teach me anything new, and the humor was too gentle and sparse to be a reason to keep reading.

He also doesn't seem to draw many conclusions from his research. The book is heavy on the "what" but  lacking big time in the"why?" and "so what?" departments. He doesn't go beyond "isn't this weird?!" to tell us what he thought of most of the things he tests out, and he hasn't presented the reader with enough information for them to be able to draw their own conclusion.

Just bringin' you a little joy. For your health and all.
From Dailypicksandflicks.com

The video below is of Jacobs speaking at Ted, and in it he says the two behaviors that he tested in the book and has actually integrated into his life are: 1) reducing noise pollution in his environment by wearing earphones and earplugs whenever he can (a somewhat dicey proposition in Manhattan, I'd imagine); and 2) to approach whatever you do with joy.

Overall SA2NA Assessment
Entertainment Value: B/B+
Educational Value: C
Snack Food Equivalent: Whole Grain Tostitos- Seems nutritious at first, and definitely fun to consume, but ultimately unsatisfying.

 

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Regular old-fashioned book: