A. J. Jacobs

At one of last year's TED conferences, writer A. J. Jacobs spoke about his long, three-tiered self-improvement project that has resulted in three books, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (2004), The Year of Biblical Thinking: One Man's Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007), and Drop-Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection (2012).