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    Getting into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book
    Getting into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book
    Getting into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book
    Ebook387 pages5 hours

    Getting into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book

    By Larry Olmsted

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    A fascinating mix of participatory journalism and history, Getting Into Guinness is the never-before told story of the bestselling copyrighted book of all time. Veteran reporter Larry Olmsted began a personal quest to break an existing world record, then to set another one, and soon he was fully immersed in the crazy and highly competitive world of record breaking. This is his behind-the-scenes report of the characters who created the famous record book and continue to make it wackier and wackier with every passing year.

    The enthralling 50-year history of the Guinness World Records is a story of phenomenal success, equally compelling failures, and extreme oddities. People all over the world strive to get into the book, often in the most unbelievable ways. Olmsted chronicles some of the funniest and most interesting Guinness record holders from a uniquely insider perspective: he himself is one of them.

    It all began with a gentleman's wager over which was the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the grouse. The attempt to answer this question has sold more than 100 million books in dozens of languages and every corner of the globe. Today, there is heated competition for the record to hold the most records (currently held by Ashrita Furman, 114 records and counting), as well as classic curiosities that have lasted for decades (the tallest man in history is still Robert Wadlow, at 8' 11"). Interwoven into all of this is Olmsted's account of his own two successful recordsetting attempts, the first involving traveling halfway around the world with his golf shoes—"Greatest Distance Between Two Rounds of Golf on the Same Day"—and the second causing him to nearly lose his mind while playing the world's longest poker session.

    Why do people devote so much energy to get into the record book, often at great risk? Why do the most extreme fans devote their entire lives to this pursuit? Why is society so obsessed with records and record breaking? Why do Americans alone buy a million and a half copies of the famous book every year, propelling it to the top of the bestseller lists decade after decade? Why do readers of all generations remember the same record holding icons, the fattest twins, the longest fingernails, and the tallest man? After his own journey inside the world of record breaking, these are the questions Olmsted attempts to answer.

    In the tradition of the bestselling Word Freak—a mélange of travelogue, memoir, investigative journalism, and history—Getting Into Guinness is a must-read for anyone who has ever read Guinness World Records and wondered why someone would grow their fingernails for an entire lifetime.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061982422
    Getting into Guinness: One Man's Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's Most Famous Record Book
    Author

    Larry Olmsted

    Larry Olmsted, a prolific freelance writer who has published thousands of articles in national publications, including Outside, Playboy, USA Today, and Inc., is a contributing editor to numerous publications, and was a longtime columnist for Investor's Business Daily. He lives in Vermont.

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    • 3/5
      I was eager to ready Larry Olmsted's book on Guinness. Like many people I grew up with a complete fascination over the book and its records, always dreaming of holding a 'World Record' in something. Olmstead's book at time engages that fascination with some extremely insightful and entertaining looks at the world of The Guinness Book of Records.Getting into Guinness is at its best when Olmstead recounts his own personal attempts at records, and perhaps if this book had been written as a personal essay it might have been better. Unfortunately its academic look at the book and its history is just plain tedious. Olmstead has an awful habit of repeating himself. He references Ben Sherwood's The Man Who Ate the 747 at least fifteen times, leans too heavily on Ken Jennings and repeats over and over the accomplishments of Ashrita Furman (who by the end of the book you will be completely sick of).About 150 pages into the book I felt 'done', unfortunately it's almost a 300 page book. Slogging through the rest of the book did have its rewards but the effort to get there is barely worth it. Ultimately Getting into Guinness is a book that covers a fantastic topic poorly, all the pieces to a good book are there but they're not assembled well. I don't think Olmstead is a bad writer at all, he does hit the mark many times in this book, but he needs a much better editor and with some hefty revisions this could actually be a book worth recommending.

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    Getting into Guinness - Larry Olmsted

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