We Have a Winner

This morning’s quiz was almost aggressively simple: name the new non-fiction book that was so mesmerizing that I nearly missed my lunch date. Your answers were, as always, pretty sensible: The Audacity of Hope, Infidel, Wikinomics, Survival of the Sickest, Blind Side, Pistol, The Race Beat, US Guys, Oil on the Brain, Size Matters, Stumbling on Happiness. What really surprised me was how you guys named most of the books I’ve read in the past several months. And of the ones I haven’t read, you named several that I’m eager to.

But the right answer was … The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, by Ron Jeremy. All I knew about Jeremy before I picked up the book was that he’s a hirsute, not-young porn star. But in the first few pages you learn that he’s got a good brain, a good sense of humor, and also a really good — well, you can probably figure out the last one for yourselves. I didn’t buy the book that day (since I was already late for lunch) but I plan to, since I know almost nothing about the porn business but I have a feeling it’s a lot more interesting as seen through Jeremy’s eyes than I would have thought.

Congratulations to “SternyDern” for coming up with the first correct guess, the 25th guess overall, at 12:54 p.m., or 1 hour and 21 minutes after the quiz was posted. He’ll get a Freakonomics t-shirt in the mail. Here is how his guess compares to some other recent correct quiz answers:

Beauty and the Geek: 10th answer, 35 minutes

The Colbert Report: 1st answer, 8 minutes

Flavor Flav: 2nd answer, 10 minutes

Mickey Mouse: 17th answer, 48 minutes

So either:

1. This was one of the hardest quizzes yet; or

2. We’ve worn you guys out; or

3. You don’t care as much about getting a t-shirt as a signed book.

Do tell.