Product Description

Exactly what it says on the tin: short, first-hand accounts of what it actually feels like to walk on the moon or be struck by lightning; to participate in an orgy or be shot in the head; to be 7'6" tall, or be bitten by a shark! Just taking a stab here, but in all likelihood, you've never walked on the moon. You've probably never won a Nobel prize, been swept up in a tornado, gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or been mauled by a ferocious animal. Not to worry. We're here to help. Thanks to Buzz Aldrin, we can share with you what it's like to stomp your boots on the fine talcum powder that covers the moon. Thanks to a California spearfisher named Rodney Orr, we can describe the crunch of a great white shark chomping down on your head. Sir Ranulph Fiennes will tell you what it feels like to black-and-decker your own frost-bitten fingers off, while actor Gabriel Pementel will tell you all about being 2'11" tall!So sit back, turn the page, and read what these extraordinary people went through for you!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145597 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
'What It Feels Like to Be Stuck in a Tornado': 'As the old joke goes, in Mississippi, divorces and tornadoes have one thing in common. Somebody's gonna lose a trailer!' 'What It Feels Like to Get Frostbite': '!So I used a Black & Decker vice and a saw in the toolshed. It wasn't too painful, but going through the bone was quite difficult!' 'What It Feels Like to be Really, Really Tall': 'In high school I was 7'6" already!if we went to a mall or something, I was the place that you'd meet at. Everyone knew where I was. They'd say, "Let's meet at Shawn"!' 'What It Feels Like to be Bitten by a Venomous Snake': '!She must have smelled the mice and rats on me because she sunk her fangs into my right forearm, just below the elbow!'

About the Author
A.J. Jacobs is a senior editor at US Esquire magazine.

Excerpted from What It Feels Like by A.J. Jacobs. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
What It Feels Like To Be Stuck in a Tornado:
'As the old joke goes, in Mississippi, divorces and tornadoes have one thing in common. Somebody's gonna lose a trailer....'

What It Feels Like to be Really, Really Tall:
'In high school I was 7'6" already... if we went to a mall or something, I was the place that you'd meet at. Everyone knew where I was. They'd say, "Let's meet at Shawn"...'

What It Feels Like to Get Frostbite:
'... So I used a Black and Decker vice and a saw in the toolshed. It wasn't too painful but going through the bone was quite difficult...'

Customer Reviews

Betcha can't read just one!
This is what I call bon-bon journalism. The pieces are all under a thousand words, some are under three hundred. They are pithy, quickly sketched and to the point, written in the first person as told to some of the writers at Esquire. I call it bon-bon journalism because the book is like a box of chocolates: you pop one into your mouth and then another and before you know it you've read the whole thing!

There are sixty-one of these little tales taken from the pages of the magazine. I wouldn't be able to pick a best one, but I liked Buzz Aldrin's reprise of what it feels like to walk on the moon: "powdery dust...the sky velvety black...surreal..." Naturally he was super focused on the task and aware that "if we made a mistake, we would regret it for quite a while."

I also liked "Going over Niagara Falls in a Barrel." It was a lot more high tech than you'd think. It took them almost a year and a half to construct the barrel. "Geoffrey Petkovich, 39, self-employed" who did it with a pal got roughed up a bit. His mouthpiece "got driven, hard" into his gums. He had two cans of beer and a pack of smokes in the barrel and two hours worth of oxygen in tanks in case the barrel sank.

Good too was "What It Feels Like to Have an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder." This guy, "Craig Strobeck, 24, actor" has to take two and a half hour showers. He runs out of hot water but doesn't stop. He has to clean every inch of his body about a thousand times. Sometimes he has to get back in the shower because one area just doesn't feel clean enough.

I was surprised to learn that when giving birth all that pushing that you have to do not only pushes the baby out, but also empties the bowels, etc. leaving a clean up detail that I never heard about before. But the endorphin rush is tremendous, so says "Dee McManamy, 43, housewife."

You get the picture. I think this would be a perfect book to take on a cross country flight, just enough light reading to keep you distracted, but you might want to skip the "What It Feels Like to Be in a Plane Crash." Then again "Ellen Hassman, 55, retired advertising executive" walked away from the detached section of the plane's tail while more than thirty other people died...

As a writer, I admired the crisp way the pieces were edited: tell the story and stop.

A great idea - sloppy execution.
I guess if I'd seen the tiny size of this book, or the words 'Esquire presents...' emblazoned across the top, I might have thought twice about buying it. But I didn't, so I did. It sounded like such a brilliant concept: rounding up a group of people who have experienced things most people never will, and asking them to present a short piece explaining what it was like. What does it feel like to be struck by lightning, or gored by a bull? To be bitten by a shark or held hostage? To have leprosy or live with multiple personalities?

But it just falls flat. Some pieces are better than others - Buzz Aldrin's experience of walking on the moon is very lyrical, for example. The piece describing what it feels like to be an executioner at a Mississippi gas chamber was heartbreaking, the one about giving birth eloquent and uplifting. But there are others, ones that should have been fascinating, that were dull as anything. The tale of a man being bitten by a venomous snake pretty just went 'I was bitten. Someone took me to hospital. They gave me the antidote.' Each essay could have been so much better structured, fleshed out to give the reader a more complete picture of the incident, the feelings, the experience as a whole, to make us feel the nerves, the adrenaline, the sadness or elation. The book just didn't deliver any of that.

If you're going to read it, do yourself a favour and get it out of the library!

Filler...
I didnt think this book was just as exciting as most other reviewers, infact I thought it read like filler in a proper book or a lot like an amusing column in a newspaper or magazine, the letters page even. I give it three stars because its interesting and some of the accounts are surprising (for instance while the account recounting an orgy tries to appear upbeat in reality it seems like the author found it disappointing and was only thinking about talking about it later), so worth a read and entertaining in the way that travel books or perhaps post secret books can be interesting. However it's more like a book you would borrow or buy from the second hand bin and return it there quickly enough.