Josh Hanagarne couldn’t be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh was six years old and onstage in a school Thanksgiving play when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was twenty, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when—while serving on a mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints—his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels.Determined to conquer his affliction, Josh underwent everything from quack remedies to lethargy-inducing drug regimes to Botox injections that paralyzed his vocal cords and left him voiceless for three years. Undeterred, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science. At last, an eccentric, autistic strongman—and former Air Force Tech Sergeant and guard at an Iraqi prison—taught Josh how to “throttle” his tics into submission through strength-training.
Today, Josh is a librarian in the main branch of Salt Lake City’s public library and founder of a popular blog about books and weight lifting—and the proud father of four-year-old Max, who has already started to show his own symptoms of Tourette’s.
The World’s Strongest Librarian illuminates the mysteries of this little-understood disorder, as well as the very different worlds of strongman training and modern libraries. With humor and candor, this unlikely hero traces his journey to overcome his disability— and navigate his wavering Mormon faith—to find love and create a life worth living.
291 pages. (May 2013)
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Title Read-alikes: The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin; Twitch and Shout by Lowell Handler; Against Medical Advice by James Patterson; Front of the Class by Brad Cohen; Ticked by James A. Fussell; Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen; Running the Books by Avi Steinberg; Dear Marcus by Jerry McGill; The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe; Not a Poster Child by Francine Falk-Allen; The Day My Brain Exploded by Ashok Rajamani; Gulp by Mary Roach; and This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson.
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