A review by jpcapili
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs

4.0

I discovered this little gem while I was reading 4-hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. The author put himself into extraordinary situations to learn from them. He pretended to be a beautiful woman seeking potential boyfriends through internet dating. He outsourced some of his personal tasks to an Indian company in order to minimize stress. He pretended to be an actor to experience fame. He unitask'ed -- where he explained how multitasking slows our thinking down, instead of being efficient. But three of my favorite social experiments that he did include Radical Honesty (where he attempted to say anything that comes up in his mind without any filters), Rationality Project (where he tried to think and do things rationally), and Project Washington (where he learned how to act and think like George Washington), which allowed me to appreciate Mr. Washington, whom I had no idea how fascinating he was until now.