The New York Times Book Review’s advice and miscellaneous best-seller list — the place where self-help books go to eyeball one another — is a boisterous rolling carnival of hustlers and hacks and optimists and jokers, with the occasional naked lady, tent preacher, dog trainer or television chef thrown in for good measure. Serious books do appear there, but they’re like guests who’ve wandered into the wrong party.

Among the writers who’ve appeared on that list, Timothy Ferriss — author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” (2007) and now “The 4-Hour Body” — is an unusually beguiling humanlike specimen. He’s a graduate of the prep school St. Paul’s and has a degree in East Asian studies from Princeton University. He is also a Guinness Book of World Records record holder for most consecutive tango spins in one minute, a feat he accomplished with a partner on “Live With Regis and Kelly.”

What else is worth knowing about Mr. Ferriss? After college he founded — and later sold — BrainQuicken, a Web company that sells nutritional supplements. He’s a so-called angel investor in Internet companies. He’s spoken at one of those futuristic, cerebral TED conferences. He pals around with Silicon Valley C.E.O.’s. Wired magazine crowned him, in 2008, the “greatest self-promoter in the world.” He is said to be very good at Chinese kickboxing.

If a movie were to be made of Mr. Ferriss’s life, it would star Matthew McConaughey in little rectangular eyeglasses. Mr. Ferriss likes to pose without a shirt — in some photographs he sprouts chest hair; in others, it’s been waxed away — and to describe the veins that run across his abdomen. He tosses around words like “thrashing” and, to refer to inanimate things, “bad boys.” His new book opens at an outdoor Nine Inch Nails concert.