The Guinea Pig Diaries (28 page)

127
I’m doing my best to walk around New York like George Washington:
I should mention that, unlike my biblical year, when I wandered the Upper West Side in a robe and sandals, I didn’t spend a lot of time sporting a tricornered hat. I only did it once, for the photo that appears at the start of this chapter. I expected that going out in public in my Colonial costume to be an afternoon of jeers, mockery, and agape mouths. But it was actually quite pleasant. The most memorable feedback I got was to be saluted by two different strangers. New Yorkers respect our Founding Fathers. (The outfit—rented from Creative Costume Company in mid-town New York—was also really comfortable, perhaps because of the elastic waistband, which may not have been totally authentic.)

Incidentally, attire wasn’t a minor thing to Washington. He wasn’t exactly a dandy, despite the fact that he owned yellow gloves. Dandyism would violate Rule 54: “Play not the peacock, looking every where about you, to see if you be well decked . . .”

But it’s fair to say he was preoccupied with external appearances. He knew the clothes can make the man. Washington designed his own outfits, as Burns and Dunn point out, right on down to the “width of lapels and placement of all 12 buttons.”

And he was the only one who showed up to the Second Continental Congress decked out in his military uniform. Which meant that when it came time to appoint the commander of the military, well, Washington was already dressed for the occasion. As Jack Donaghy on
30 Rock
says: “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”

151
Multitasking costs the economy $650 billion a year, according to the Institute of Pulling Numbers Out of Its Ass:
Actually it’s from Jonathan B. Spira, chief analyst at a business research firm called Basex, as quoted in Walter Kirn’s
Atlantic
article.

174
Nietzche’s writing changed:
The observation about how Nietzsche’s writing style changed after he started using a typewriter is from “Is Google Making Us Stupid” in the
Atlantic.
Thanks to Google for that one.

176
“Daddy! Daddy!” “Can’t talk now,” I responded:
In
The Year of Living Biblically,
I mentioned that when he was two years old, Jasper was behind the curve, vocabulary-wise. For the record—and in case Jasper ever reads my books—I want to say that he’s now fully caught up and speaks like a young William F. Buckley Jr.

193
just about twice a week, according to several recent surveys:
It’s actually a complicated question—the one about how often married couples have sex. It differs according to age, health, and country. More information can be found here:
http://family.jrank.org/pages/1102/Marital-Sex-Sexual-Frequency.html
.

C
HAPTER 3:
I T
HINK
Y
OU’RE
F
AT

Blanton, Brad.
Beyond Good and Evil.
Stanley, Va.: Sparrowhawk, 2006.

———
.
Honest to God.
Stanley, Va.: Sparrowhawk, 2001.

———
.
Practicing Radical Honesty.
Stanley, Va.: Sparrowhawk, 2000.

———.
Radical Honesty.
Stanley, Va.: Sparrowhawk, 2005.

———.
The Truthtellers.
Stanley, Va.: Sparrowhawk, 2004.

Frankfurt, Harry G.
On Bullshit.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.

C
HAPTER 4: 240
M
INUTES OF
F
AME

Braudy, Leo.
The Frenzy of Renown.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Elkin, Stanley. “In Darkest Hollywood.”
Harper’s,
December 1989.

Halpern, Jake.
Fame Junkies.
Boston: Mariner, 2008.

Pinsky, Dr. Drew, and S. Mark Young.
The Mirror Effect.
New York: Harper, 2009.

C
HAPTER 5:
T
HE
R
ATIONALITY
P
ROJECT

Aamodt, Sarah, and Sam Wang.
Welcome to Your Brain.
New York:

Bloomsbury USA, 2008.

Ariely, Dan.
Predictably Irrational.
New York: Harper, 2008.

Brafman, Ori, and Rom Brafman.
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.
New York: Doubleday, 2008.

Fine, Cordelia.
A Mind of Its Own.
New York: Norton, 2008.

Gardner, Daniel.
The Science of Fear.
New York: Dutton, 2008.

Gilbert, Daniel.
Stumbling on Happiness.
New York: Knopf, 2006.

Kida, Thomas E.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2006.

Howard, Martin.
We Know What You Want.
New York: Disinformation Company, 2005.

Lehrer, Jonah.
How We Decide.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.

Marcus, Gary.
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

Packard, Vance.
The Hidden Persuaders.
Brooklyn, N.Y.: Ig, 2007.

Pink, Daniel H.
A Whole New Mind.
New York: Riverhead, 2006.

Rushkoff, Douglas.
Coercion: Why We Listen to What “They” Say.
New York: Riverhead, 1999.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
New York: Random House, 2007.

Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein.
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
New York: Penguin, 2008.

Vyse, Stuart.
Believing in Magic.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Walker, Rob.
Buying In.
New York: Random House, 2008. Zimbardo, Philip.
The Lucifer Effect.
New York: Random House, 2008.

C
HAPTER 7:
W
HAT
W
OULD
G
EORGE
W
ASHINGTON
D
O
?

Brookhiser, Richard.
What Would the Founders Do?
New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Burns, James MacGregor, and Dunn, Susan.
George Washington.
New York: Times Books, 2004.

Caldwell, Mark.
A Short History of Rudeness.
New York: Picador, 1999.

Day, Nancy.
Your Travel Guide to Colonial America.
Minneapolis: Runestone, 2001.

Ellis, Joseph J.
His Excellency: George Washington.
New York: Knopf, 2004.

Fleming, Thomas.
Washington’s Secret War.
New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Hawke, David Freeman.
Everyday Life in Early America.
New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Hemphill, C. Dallett.
Bowing to Necessities.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Johnson, Paul.
George Washington: The Founding Father.
New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.

Rees, James, with Stephen Spignesi.
George Washington’s Leadership Lessons.
Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2007.

Smith, Richard Norton.
Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Unger, Harlow Giles.
The Unexpected George Washington.
Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2006.

Washington, George.
Rules of Civility.
Ed. Richard Brookhiser. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.

C
HAPTER 8:
T
HE
U
NITASKER

Bernstein, Jeffrey.
10 Days to a Less Distracted Child.
New York: Marlowe, 2007.

Bodian, Stephan.
Meditation for Dummies.
Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2006.

Conley, Dalton.
Elsewhere, U.S.A.
New York: Pantheon, 2009.

Crenshaw, Dave.
The Myth of Multitasking.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Davich, Victor.
8 Minute Meditation.
New York: Perigee, 2004.

Hallowell, Edward M., and John J. Ratey.
Driven to Distraction.
New York: Touchstone, 1994.

Jackson, Maggie.
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2008.

Lieberman, Matthew D., et al. “Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli,”
Psychological Science,
June 2007.

Medina, John.
Brain Rules.
Seattle: Pear, 2008.

Nadeau, Kathleen, and Ellen B. Dixon.
Learning to Slow Down and Pay Attention.
Washington, D.C.: Magination, 2004.

Posner, Michael, and Mary Rothbart.
Educating the Human Brain.
New York: APA, 2006.

Wallace, B. Alan.
The Attention Revolution.
Somerville, Mass.: Wisdom, 2006.

C
HAPTER 9:
W
HIPPED

Belkin, Lisa. “When Mom and Dad Share It All.”
New York Times,
June 15, 2008.

Coontz, Stephanie.
Marriage, a History.
New York: Penguin, 2006.

Dowd, Maureen.
Are Men Necessary?
New York: Putnam Adult, 2005.

Faber, Adele, and Elaine Mazlish.
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.
New York: Avon, 1999.

Fisher, Helen.
Why We Love.
New York: Henry Holt, 2004.

Glover, Robert A.
No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003.

Gray, John.
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell, with Anne Machung.
The Second Shift.
New York: Penguin, 1993.

Schwartz, Pepper.
Love Between Equals.
New York: Free Press, 1994.

There’s an irrational brain quirk called the “Egocentric Bias,” which causes an individual to overestimate his or her contribution to a joint project and underestimate others’ contributions.

No way I’m falling for that. Which is why I’m about to go on an epic thanking spree. So here goes:

Thank you to Marysue Rucci, my editor at Simon & Schuster, who is brilliant, funny, inspiring, and also patient with deadlines.

Thanks to Sloan Harris at ICM, a great agent whose civility rivals George Washington’s.

Thanks to David Granger, the visionary editor of
Esquire,
in whose magazine some of these essays had their start. And to Peter Griffin, who edited some of these essays for
Esquire
and made them a hell of a lot better.

Thanks to Rob Weisbach, without whom I wouldn’t be a writer.

There are an absurd number of people to thank at Simon & Schuster: the unflappable Julia Prosser, Nicole De Jackmo, Victoria Meyer, Aileen Boyle, Lisa Healy, Marcella Berger, Jackie Seow, Amy Cormier, Leah Wasielewski, and Sophie Epstein, one of the greatest e-mailers I know. Thanks to my bosses, David Rosenthal and Carolyn Reidy, for the unwavering support.

I’m indebted to all who read the manuscript and gave me their wisdom, namely: Shannon Barr, Neely Harris, Andrew Lund, Kevin Roose, David Katz, Brian Raftery, John Podhoretz, Lily Percy, Jeffrey Engel, Candice Braun, Lynette Vanderwarker, Gary Rudoren, Gretchen Rubin, Paul Mandell, Roger Bennett, Peter Martin, Chad Millman, and Albert Kim.

I’m grateful to those who helped focus my thoughts about focusing— Maggie Jackson and John Fossella.

Thanks to the patriotic staff at Mount Vernon, especially James Rees, Mary Thompson, and Melissa Wood.

Thanks to Nigel Parry and F. Scott Schafer for the images.

Thanks to APB’s Ken Eisenstein, Jonathan Braverman, and Linda Braverman. And to the rational minds of Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and Dan Ariely.

Thanks to many others at ICM, including Josie Freedman and Kristyn Keene.

Thanks again to my understanding family—my mom, dad, sister, and brother-in-law—for allowing me to turn their private lives public.

Thanks to my mother-in-law, who made the right decision about her apartment.

Thanks, above all, to my preternaturally saintly wife, Julie, and our three wonderful guinea pigs, Jasper, Zane, and Lucas.

A. J. Jacobs
is the author of two
New York Times
bestsellers:
The Know-It-All
and
The Year of Living Biblically.
He is the editor at large at
Esquire
magazine. A.J. has written for the
New York Times, Washington Post,
and
Entertainment Weekly,
and is an occasional correspondent for National Public Radio. He lives in New York City with his wife, Julie, and their children. You can visit his website at
www.ajjacobs.com
.