A.J. Jacobs - Other Writing

OTHER WRITING

MySpace
myspace.com/jacobsaj

Facebook
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=544470476&hiq=aj%2Cjacobs

My Outsourced Life
Esquire, September, 2005
Why should Fortune 500 companies have all the fun? I hired a team in Bangalore, India, to take care of everything in my life-my e-mails, phone calls, shopping, arguments with my wife, reading bedtime stories to my son. (The article was also featured in Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Workweek.
www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214

I Think You’re Fat
An immersion into the bizarre, entertaining and terrifying world of Radical Honesty – a movement that encourages us to remove the filters between our brains and mouths.
www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707

My Life as a Hot Woman
Esquire, May, 2007
I go on a quest to find my beautiful nanny a boyfriend. The method? I impersonate her on an online dating site. In doing so, I discover some suitors and get a look at the sometimes charming, often disturbing masculine wiles used by today’s men.
www.esquire.com/features/hotwoman0507

Obits 2006
Esquire, June, 2006
Obituaries for, among other things, human dignity, crunk and my wife’s crush on Kiefer Sutherland.
www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0706TWO_140

Obits 2007
Esquire, June, 2007
The Obituaries sequel. This one has elegies for American Hegemony and Borat Catchphrases.
www.esquire.com/features/this-way-out/obits0507

The Tao of Kato
Esquire, June, 2003
In defense of the misunderstood, goofy, angst-ridden peroxided court jester
http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0602-JUN_KATO

What to Expect: Your Baby’s First 75 years
At 50, your baby should be using words like “sciatica” and eating foods like Benecol.
www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0705TWO_144

In defense of the misunderstood, goofy, angst-ridden, peroxided court jester

Mary Louise Parker made me get naked. But it wasn’t as much fun as you think.
Esquire, November, 2002
But it wasn't as much fun as you think.
www.esquire.com/women/women-we-love/ESQ1102-NOV_PARKER_rev_2

A Guide to Off-Line Email
One of two New York Times op-ed articles based on my America Off-Line book.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E12FF3D5F0C7A8DDDAE0894DF494D81&showabstract=1

I Am Not a Jackass
The Know-It-All, I’m delighted to say, was embraced warmly by the vast majority of media outlets and reviewers, including those at Time, Newsweek, People, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, Esquire, Premiere, Time Out New York, my uncle Henry on Amazon.com, et cetera. If you want to see a roundup, check out this site that compiles major reviews:
www.metacritic.com/books/authors/jacobsaj/knowitall

There was, however, one rather notable exception. That would be in The New York Times Book Review. Here, a rival humorist named Joe Queenan had what can only be described as a psychotic episode. The man actually believed I was trying to become the smartest person in the world, and it made him very, very angry. He wrote an exceedingly snarky review. Happily, I wrote a full-page rebuttal to that review a few weeks later in The New York Times Book Review itself. Here, my semi-famous literary feud:
www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/books/review/13JACOBSL.htm