The Underdog: How I Survived the World's Most Outlandish Competitions - Tapa dura

A young journalist analyzes humankind's obsession with competition and the offbeat subcultures that encourage it as, in order to prove something to his wife, he takes part in a variety of offbeat events, including the U.S. Armwrestling Championships, Japanese sumo wrestling, Spanish bullfighting, Italian backward walking races, and a Scandinavian sauna contest. 20,000 first printing.

Though young, Joshua Davis has accumulated a lifetime of failures. In grade school, he electrocuted himself while trying to construct a fully operational replica of the USS Kitty Hawk in his bathtub. In high school, he started a rock band and at the first and only performance forgot the lyrics of the band’s one song; the group disbanded. After college, Davis directed a feature-length film about a group of friends living in northern California; the movie was bought by a shady distribution company in Nicaragua. The plan: Recoup the investment by showing the indie film on Panamanian buses, The distributor soon declared bankruptcy, never paid for film, and Davis went to work as a data entry clerk at the phone company.
The Underdog is his first book. In the course of writing it, he snuck into Iraq to cover the war for Wired magazine, for which he is now a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Tara.

Check out the author's website at www.joshuadavis.net