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Actual Books
Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics,
Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™
“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
-- Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
-- New York Observer
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING.”
-- John Hodgman,
author, The Areas of My Expertise and correspondent for The Daily Show
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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SPOILER ALERT
If you don't know how the final of the quiz show Grand Slam came out, and you're planning on watching it later, avert your eyes!
Read no further!
Switch!
Congrats to our Trebekistan bud Ken Jennings for a truly awesome display against cartoonish supervillain Ogi Ogas in the Grand Slam final. Dude brought his A-game, and by the end, Ogi had not only been defeated, but transformed against his will, Bruce Banner-like, back into an ordinary human being, able to smile and converse and compliment others. Truly a comic-book-hero performance.
 Ken's a modest enough guy, incidentally, that his only blog post to date on the issue is genuine praise for Ogi, along with a call for the public to understand that he's not a monster, he's just a mad scientist gone astray. Pretty classy, you ask me.
Incidentally, Ken's newest book, Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac: 7,777 Questions in 365 Days, will be available just in time for... the day after Christmas, according to Amazon. Hmm. Apparently the marketers at Villard aren't as quick on the buzzer as Ken himself.
Anyhow, my congrats to the Brigham Thumb on that as well -- I know a little about how much work getting a new book ready can be, although more on that shortly.
Speaking of Ken's buzzer skills, if you missed it, we had the chance to do a joint book signing (Trebekistan meets Brainiac) a while back, followed later by an exhibition match between Ken and me and Ed Toutant from Millionaire.
 If you're wondering, Ed won, running away from Ken and me as if we weren't even there. This surprised a few in the crowd, but not anyone who knows how good Ed is when he brings his A-game. (Incidentally, yes, Ed really is nine feet tall.)
When Ed was on Jeopardy!, he lost after only a couple of games. But 74-win Ken accepted his ambush trouncing from Ed that day with exactly the same grace he showed in winning Grand Slam this weekend.
Which is ultimately the thing I want to point to here -- not how Ken won, but how Ken won. Anybody who uses this guy's name as a shorthand just for braininess is missing a big chunk of what's cool here.
Ken deserves a lot of congrats at this point. A lot of which don't have a damn thing to do with quiz shows.
PS: Btw, I gotta admit, while I loved Grand Slam, I'll confess: playing along at home, I felt kinda like a boxer who'd been passed over for a major bout. I coulda been a contendah! I coulda had class, Charlie! Oh well. Maybe next year.
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