|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Lewis Fumbles Nov 04, 2009
It's kind of interesting that two excellent Berkeley-based writers named Michael both happened to come out with a book of ruminations on modern fatherhood (and its corollary, manhood) within a few months of each other. Since we added a second child to our own household a few months ago, and I'm now on (unpaid) leave to take care of him for a few months, this struck me as a good time to check out what two writers I greatly respect have to say on my current profession. (The other book is Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs). To a certain extent, both authors grapple with the state that Lewis articles in his introduction: "Obviously, we're in the midst of some long unhappy transition between the model of fatherhood as practiced by my father and some ideal model."
Unfortunately, Lewis has set such a high bar with his past books (Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side), that this loosely assembled patchwork of journal entries and Slate.com essays ends up being a total disappointment. It's kind of stunning to me that someone with his powers of both analysis and storytelling managed to say absolutely nothing interesting, provocative, or even amusing about being a father in this new age of fatherhood. Instead, he paints himself in the usual self-deprecating colors of progressive fatherhood -- ever the bumbling idiot, an object of dismissive scorn by his partner, etc. Almost every situation reads like a story one's already heard before, and his ambivalence about fatherhood will be familiar to, um, pretty much any male reader who's had a kid in the last ten years or so.
I guess some people might find this "frank" male perspective enlightening or refreshing, but as a fellow guy, I was mainly bored. Maybe I'm the wrong audience for this book -- after all, I was a stay-at-home dad for about ten months with our first child. It may be that his incredibly minor trials and tribulations end up sounding kind of whiny. Ultimately, I wish he could have found a fresh angle to take on the topic of parenting. For example, he knows a lot about incentives, he could have examined his own parenting through the lens of incentives (and arrived at a better version of the book Parentonomics). Or, as in Moneyball, he could have taken a look at the historically dominant paradigm of contemporary fathering and examined why that's undergone a dramatic shift in certain demographics (such as his) over the last ten years or so.
Like I said, I really like Michael Lewis' past books, but this one is a dud. Skip it and try out Michael Chabon's much funnier, provocative, and more emotionally compelling Manhood for Amateurs instead.
 revealing Sep 28, 2009
Lewis is a great writer, also his insight and honesty makes this a must read for all fathers. He uses humour and a bit of sarcasm to describe the fatherly love
 Should have been a magazine article. Sep 20, 2009
Why was this published in hardback?
There is nothing new to learn in this collection of stories. Tired comedy from familiar anecdotes. Paul Reiser wrote a book about 10 years ago and it's similar but funnier. The ill-equipped Dad stumbling through the early years of childhood/parenthood is scorched earth in that it's been explored and exploited. This offers nothing new or no real insights. It's not even that humorous, just vanilla all the way through, I like vanilla but not in hard-back.
It's written well enough and because of that it lulled me into a pointless journey. The smugness of his celebrity as a writer really annoyed me. It's never spelled out but there's just this sense that fatherhood is an experiment and this memoir is just a literary exercise until something more interesting comes along. I'm just not invested in him as a character. I wonder why anyone close to him thought that this was worth publishing? Does his name and excellence in his craft make his personal life interesting? Not to me.
But, who am I? No one really. He wrote and finished a book, that alone is worth 2 stars. I think I got 400 points for spelling my name correctly on my SAT tests.
Maybe new Dads will like it and maybe I expected too much.
My advice, buy it used.
 Positively Gleeful Sep 07, 2009
I have no special reason for reading this right now except I enjoyed the interview on Charlie Rose and did enjoy the book "Panic". But my youngest is 21 and oldest 30. If anything I should be wondering what things may be in store for them eventually, but what peaked my interest was ML's description of this book as an honest view of what men really thought through the child rearing experience. Could he really mean it? Well, I suppose he did and does. So now having read this I am prepared to suggest it gleefully to friends who have lived through the experience and maybe even those who will someday. Good luck! Enjoy. My wife, on hearing the "plot" was concerned what ML's children would think of it. "I am the foot soldier who has leapt on the hand grenade, so that others may live." "The first rule of fatherhood is that if you don't see what the problem is, you are the problem." Ditto with rule two. But "After each child, I learn the same lesson, grudgingly: If you want to feel the way you're meant to feel about the new baby, you need to do the grunt work. It's only in caring for a thing that you become attached to it."
Great book! Sep 03, 2009
I loved this book. As a mother of a 3 year-old boy, I can totally relate to the experiences the author had. Before I had my child, I bought so many books on parenting and after I had my baby, I honestly felt lied to. I didn't feel like those books really prepared me for what was coming... They didn't seem to really address all the issues, the feelings and the struggles of having and raising a child. I am not saying that it is all bad, but nobody seems to be willing to talk about how hard it is going to be. This book talks about it in a funny, entertaining, but also very real way. I found myself laughing out loud a lot. Fast read too. He is a great storyteller! I am looking forward to reading other books from Michael Lewis. If you are a new parent or a parent to be, do yourself a favor and read this book. :-)
|
| |
|
![Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V%2Beipy8-L._SL75_.jpg "Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]")
![Across the Universe [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T24FuHPEL._SL75_.jpg "Across the Universe [Blu-ray]")
![Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F27VzUl%2BL._SL75_.jpg "Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]")
![Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RQUEopdlL._SL75_.jpg "Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]")
