Hilarious NYT book review - Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Body

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07book.html

January 6, 2011
New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!
By DWIGHT GARNER

THE 4-HOUR BODY
An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
By Timothy Ferriss
571 pages. Crown Archetype. $27.

The New York Times Book Review’s advice and miscellaneous best-seller list — the place where self-help books go to eyeball one another — is a boisterous rolling carnival of hustlers and hacks and optimists and jokers, with the occasional naked lady, tent preacher, dog trainer or television chef thrown in for good measure. Serious books do appear there, but they’re like guests who’ve wandered into the wrong party. Among the writers who’ve appeared on that list, Timothy Ferriss — author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” (2007) and now “The 4-Hour Body” — is an unusually beguiling humanlike specimen. He’s a graduate of the prep school St. Paul’s and has a degree in East Asian studies from Princeton University. He is also a Guinness Book of World Records record holder for most consecutive tango spins in one minute, a feat he accomplished with a partner on “Live With Regis and Kelly.”

What else is worth knowing about Mr. Ferriss? After college he founded — and later sold — BrainQuicken, a Web company that sells nutritional supplements. He’s a so-called angel investor in Internet companies. He’s spoken at one of those futuristic, cerebral TED conferences. He pals around with Silicon Valley C.E.O.’s. Wired magazine crowned him, in 2008, the “greatest self-promoter in the world.” He is said to be very good at Chinese kickboxing. If a movie were to be made of Mr. Ferriss’s life, it would star Matthew McConaughey in little rectangular eyeglasses. Mr. Ferriss likes to pose without a shirt — in some photographs he sprouts chest hair; in others, it’s been waxed away — and to describe the veins that run across his abdomen. He tosses around words like “thrashing” and, to refer to inanimate things, “bad boys.” His new book opens at an outdoor Nine Inch Nails concert.

He can use without irony, as he does in “The 4-Hour Body,” lines like: “I was enjoying French food and a bottle of Bordeaux with a 25-year-old female yoga instructor new to San Francisco, fresh from the Midwest.” This poor woman lets slip that she’s unable to have an orgasm. Mr. Ferriss, as any humanitarian would, makes it a point to fix this problem for her. “I was able to facilitate orgasms,” he writes, “in every woman who acted as a test subject.” Everything about Mr. Ferriss’s book declares: This is not your auntie’s self-help book. No muffled “I’m OK — You’re OK” tone here. The vibe is: I’m Superbad, bro, and I have dimples. You’re a mole person who, if you become an angel investor in my books, might someday touch the hem of my Speedo.

In his previous book, “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” (his subtitles are awesome), which was on the hardcover advice best-seller list for more than 75 weeks, he delivered tips like (I’m exaggerating only slightly): hire an overseas virtual assistant for a few bucks an hour and use the extra time to ski in the Andes. His new one, “The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman,” made its debut at No. 1 on the hard-cover advice list on Jan. 2. It’s among the craziest, most breathless things I’ve ever read, and I’ve read Klaus Kinski, Dan Brown and Snooki....