Getting into Guinness

“Here at last is the perfect read for anyone who ever picked up a copy of Guinness World Records and asked, ‘Who are these people and why do they do this?’” —Jake Halpern, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and author
 
The enthralling fifty-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. Larry 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 record-setting 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.
 
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.</