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Eat This Book, April 2006
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Eat This Book
Ryan Nerz

A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit

St. Martin's Griffin
April 2006
320 pages
ISBN: 0312339682
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Non-Fiction

Journalist Ryan Nerz spent a year penetrating the highest echelons of international competitive eating. Eat This Book is the fascinating and gut-bustingly hilarious account of his journey.

Nerz recounts the history of competitive eating, from its origins as a clever Nathan's Famous promotion on a Coney Island street corner in 1916 to the founding of the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) in 1997, and its subsequent development into an international sport and American cultural phenomenon. As an emcee for the IFOCE, he takes us behind the scenes at dozens of competitions. He divulges the eaters' training techniques, explains the controversial Belt of Fat Theory (which helps explain why the little guys often win), and dissects the corporate wars for control over this exploding sport. He keeps the reader turning the pages as we are swept up in the lives of Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, Ed "Cookie" Jarvis, Eric "Badlands" Booker, and many other top gurgitators whose egos and secret agendas, hopes and dreams are revealed in dramatic detail.

As Nerz himself goes on a quest to become a top-flight gurgitator, we become obsessed with him as he lies awake at night in physical pain from downing dozens of burgers and learning to chug gallons of water to expand his increasingly abused stomach. His journey climaxes when he interviews and then competes against Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, whose dominance on the circuit rivals that of Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods in their sports.

Sparing no one's appetite, Nerz reveals the training, game-day strategies, and after-effects of competition in this delectably shocking banquet of gorging and glory on the competitive eating circuit.

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