What It Feels Like To 📘 | Extreme Human Experiences Edited by A. J. Jacobs

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📘 What does it actually feel like to survive something extreme?

In this video, I review Esquire Presents: What It Feels Like To, an anthology edited by A. J. Jacobs and drawn from Esquire magazine’s long-running feature of the same name. This collection brings together first-person essays that focus not on explanation or analysis, but on lived experience.

Contributors describe moments most of us will never encounter firsthand: surviving avalanches, being struck by lightning, walking on the moon, sudden illness, violence, danger, and extraordinary moments of survival or transformation. Each essay asks a single question: what did it feel like?

Because this is a collection of many different voices, the quality of the writing varies, but the experiences themselves remain compelling. The book works best as immersive narrative journalism, offering proximity to fear, confusion, awe, and resilience rather than conclusions or lessons.

In this video, I talk about:
📖 Why I picked up this book as part of reading A. J. Jacobs’s work
📖 How the anthology is structured and the kinds of experiences it covers
📖 The strengths and limits of first-person experiential writing
📖 My personal reaction to the collection
📖 Who this book is for and who might want to skip it

This is a book to read slowly, in pieces, and to sit with rather than rush through. It’s not perfect, but it is often gripping and difficult to forget.

📚 More fiction and nonfiction book reviews on my channel, Spencer Reads Everything.

👇 Watch more of these A. J. Jacob's reviews:
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➡️    • America Off-Line 📵📚 A Satirical Time Capsu...  

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0:00 Hook
0:24 Introduction
1:25 Why I Picked it Up
2:09 A. J. Jacobs
3:29 Esquire Presents What is Feels Like Summary
6:09 Personal Reaction
7:20 Who is this for?
8:09 Who is this NOT for?
8:59 Final Thoughts