Raised on a ranch in Colorado, JR won a Fulbright Scholarship to Latin America after university and gained firsthand experience of carnival, cholera and military coups. Between blackouts and water shortages, he also freelanced for the New York Times.

He later worked on Fleet Street and Wall Street, with stints in Peru, Mexico and Brazil before settling in Britain. Now on the wrong side of thirty, he has lived in the UK for most of the past decade.

His first book was "TRUE BRITS: A tour of twenty-first century Britain in all its shin-kicking, bog-snorkelling and cheese-rolling glory". TRUE BRITS was published in the UK by Century in 2004 and in the US by Overlook Press in 2005.

JR's latest book is "TOSSERS AND ARSEBLOWERS: An Alternative Romp Through Europe”, published in the UK by Century in May 2008.
Elsewhere, his writing on subjects ranging from male escorts and estuary English to the controversial World Economic Forum has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Times to the International Herald Tribune.

His humiliating shin-kicking debut was broadcast to the world by CNN.

You can see clips of JR in action here:

www.youtube.com/jrdaeschner

Not all Spaniards are Goat Tossers, not all Frenchmen are Arse Blowers, and not all Portuguese are Penis Cake Eaters. But JR Daeschner knows quite a few who are.

In Tossers and Arseblowers, he picks up where he left off with True Brits and crosses the Channel in search of Europe's most surreal traditions. From the far west of Ireland to the Continental divide in Istanbul, he ventures where few foreigners have gone before, witnessing spectacles such as the Baby Jumping Festival and the Rigor Mortis Procession in Spain, Snake Handling and Fire Dancing in Greece, Cow Fighting in Switzerland and the celebrations in honour of England's patron saint in the heart of the EU.

Along the way, he's inducted into the Order of the Priceless Sardine and catches countless characters in action, including a German detective turned 'love spy', the last of the Irish matchmakers, a Sicilian coprophile and a gay Turkish 'Bear'.

Whether it's the furore over the camp following for Oil Wrestling in Turkey or the controversy surrounding the Dutch 'Santa' and his black sidekick, Daeschner finds that these centuries-old events reveal surprising insights into our Continental neighbours.