[close] After months of tighter-than-CIA secrecy, here is the exclusive inside story of the TV smash Survivor. Its creator, Mark Burnett, calls the show "Gilligan's Island meets Lord of the Flies meets Ten Little Indians meets The Real World," but you knew that. What's new about this book is the view from the other side of the lens. While the contestants gobbled wriggling three-inch beetles and savaged each other, Burnett and company were feverishly running the show and writing this tell-all account. It gives you a better feel than TV can for the natural setting: pristine beaches infested with skin-burrowing bugs that scarred "coquette" Colleen for life; Malaysian field rats attracted by the survivors' food and crawling over them all night; six-foot, yellow-and-black-banded sea kraits (snakes) devouring the rats; 300-pound pythons reeking of rotting meat, poised to drop from trees and eat people.

Except for the crew's hands-down favorite, U.S. Air Force survival trainer Gretchen ("She was wholesome, she was a survivalist, she looked great in a bathing suit"), most of the contestants were nice as pythons. Laid-back Gervase said, "Nothing's dumber than a woman, except maybe a cow," amusing "alpha male" Joel and enraging Jenna, Colleen, and Gretchen (IQ 142). Greg, who stank more than others because he slept in the jungle and got more bug bites, infuriated show host Jeff Probst. Despite "long nights cuddling with Colleen," Greg betrayed her to flirt with the aptly named winner, Rich. "It's like a kitten you find," Greg says of Colleen. "You give it a name, like Fluffy ... you're starving. So you look right in the kitten's eyes and break its neck. Nothing personal." The authors compare gay Rich and homophobe Rudy to the Odd Couple, and Dirk and Sean to "a pair of Malaysian field rats trying to stand up to a yellow-banded krait. The krait, of course was Susan."

The Pagong tribe was young, strong, lazy, and quarrelsome--"MTV's Beach House." The Tagi were older, but a far better team, and so more successful. And the most consistent, cynical, and adaptive contestant won.

Survivor is not just great gossip; it's the most fascinating and massively popular psychology experiment ever conducted. --Tim Appelo [close]