Having achieved enlightenment in The Year of Living Biblically and sharpened his mind in The Know-It-All, bestselling author A.J. Jacobs had one feat left in the self-improvement trinity: to make over his body and become the healthiest person in the world.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection catalogs how Jacobs subjected himself to a grueling but entertaining regimen of exercise, diets and experiments that yielded surprising insights. He assembled a team of expert medical advisers, pledged to disentangle medical myths from reality, and broke down his quest body part by body part.

The book tests our culture’s assumptions and obsessions with what makes good health. Despite his success—a transformation Jacobs proves with data and photographs—good health emerges as a means to a simple end: to be around to see his three young sons grow up.