Notable and Quotable

…[Timothy] Ferriss offers advice about so many disparate things ”” not simply losing weight and building muscle and improving sex and living forever, but learning to hold your breath longer than Houdini (!) and hit baseballs like Babe Ruth (!!) ”” that paging through “The 4-Hour Body” is like reading the sprawling menu in a dubious diner, quite certain the only thing you’d dare order is the turkey club.

Here’s a better analogy: “The 4-Hour Body” reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog. Some of this junk might actually work, but you’re going to be embarrassed doing it or admitting to your friends that you’re trying it. This is a man who, after all,… likes bloodletting as a life-extension strategy and aims a Philips goLite at his body in place of ingesting caffeine.

–Dwight Garner in a review of Timothy Ferris’ new book, “The 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman,” in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review