The Year of Living Biblically

Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs spends a year attempting to follow every rule in the Bible as literally as possible — the well-known commandments alongside obscure ones like avoiding mixed fibers and growing a full beard. Along the way he visits a creationist museum, observes the Sabbath with Orthodox Jews, and spends time with fundamentalist and evangelical communities across the country. The result is a memoir that is by turns comic and sincere, using strict literalism to ask what the Bible actually asks of a modern reader.