假裝是個好爸爸

by Michael Lewis, 麥可·路易士, 陳重亨 (Translator)

　　當了爸爸，就會自然而然產生父愛嗎？
　　在孩子出生一個月後，麥可・路易士看著手上大哭的娃兒，懷疑自己會不會把她丟下陽台⋯⋯
　　但在半年後，他已經可以為女兒擋卡車，從一個怪物變成真正的爸爸了！
　　
　　最善於述說財經故事的路易士，
　　決定用理性和男性的角度觀察這個神奇的轉變，記錄自己為人父的真實感受。
　　但他發現，他在應有的感受與實際的感受之間，總存在著令人困擾的差距——
　　
　　● 應該生氣的時候，他常常暗自高興！
　　● 應該擔心的時候，他覺得無關緊要！
　　
　　更令人驚訝的是，其他爸爸們也有相同的困惑，但是大家都在假裝——
　　假裝做同樣的事情、體會同一種感受⋯⋯假裝自己是個好爸爸。
　　
　　例如，老婆在陣痛時，最好掩飾自己的個人需求，等老婆打瞌睡才能偷偷去買巧克力鮮奶油夾心酥和洋芋片；大女兒討厭剛出生的妹妹搶走媽媽而鬧脾氣，路易士卻默默感到驕傲：因為她能明白自己的權利受到侵犯，一定能在自由市場經濟中出人頭地啦！
　　
　　成為父親，讓路易士的心理和生活充滿了各式各樣的細微轉變，有育兒的歡樂趣事，也不乏嚴厲挑戰。他雖自嘲為家中的冷板凳球員，只有媽媽不在時才能候補上陣；但同時也了解到，自己的生命比過往重要許多，這不僅讓他成了不敢承擔任何風險（包括股票市場）的膽小鬼，甚至從原本躲避麻煩事的「不沾鍋」，漸漸體會到，你為那無助的小傢伙所做的點點滴滴，都會使你愛上他。
　　
　　路易士以簡明輕快、詼諧幽默的文字，袒露為人父的經歷與心情，並從中反思親職教育對孩子產生的影響，在日常生活而非教養書中探索父親的角色與養育工作的分配。本書不僅引起眾多爸爸的共鳴，也是妻子嘗試了解另一半為父心聲的最佳故事。

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Memoir, Biography, Humor, Biography Memoir, Audiobook

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).

Reviews

[RandomAnthony · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a request. Do NOT buy Home Team for anyone as a Father’s Day gift. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT. Thank you.

Here’s why:

• This book is no-thought-necessary present for people who don’t know shit about the father in question. If you knew anything about the father in question, you would know he doesn’t want this book.
• The father doesn’t want this book if he’s a reader. The gauzy cover with the author drinking coffee while his child sits on his lap screams “Not a real book! Not a real book!” and the contents confirm said scream. It’s like the publisher’s marketing department took soulless, flowery Mother’s Day marketing strategies and applied them to Father’s Day. So you’d be buying a Father’s Day present based on Mother’s Day sell jobs for presents not even your mother would want except she’s probably just glad to get a present. Shame on you!
• There’s not much to this text; I read it in about the same time it takes me to read an issue of Wired, and the latter is smarter and better written. I procured my copy of Home Team from the library. Only suckers purchase this book. The book costs 24 bucks! Think of all the cool things you could buy for 24 bucks before you buy this title.
• The father doesn’t want this book if he’s a non-reader. You’d only be buying this for him because you can’t think of anything better and you happened to glance at a display that reeled in your desperate “I can’t think what to buy” ass at the wrong moment. Sure! I’ll buy him a book! You can’t lose with a book! Guess what? You sure fucking can. The father will thank you for this book but secretly wonder what the hell you were thinking.
• The author is married to former MTV news vixen Tabitha Soren. She is his third wife. I once had a thing for Tabitha Soren’s smart hottie persona even after her Celebrity Jeopardy Waterloo (in case you never saw that episode, Ms. Soren was in negative territory from the start and should have been removed early due to the slaughter rule). However, anyone can have a bad day on a game show, and Ms. Soren fueled enough of my college girlfriend dreams to earn fond memories. Lewis makes her sound like an insane bitch while tossing only the slightest of backhanded compliments in her direction. Leave him, Tabitha! I hope you didn’t sign a pre-nup. Take him for all he’s worth. I predict within ten years Lewis will write a post-split book called Blown Save. That title will be marketed towards recent divorcees.
• Lewis is a pussy who whines about his privileged life in Paris and Berkeley. Yeah. I feel sorry for him.
• Lewis is a name-dropper of affluence. He doesn’t just buy a tent, he buys it at REI.

Buying this book would support Lewis. And do you really want to support a guy like this? Or books like this? I don’t think so. I trust you. Make the right choice.

[Tony · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few hilariously funny anecdotal stories aside, this book by Michael Lewis is poison. While somewhat entertaining, and an extremely easy and quick read, this book provides little insight into 'real' fatherhood. It does little more than propagate the hideous fallacy that only mothers can be the true nurturers and care-givers for our children, and any attempts by a man to do so can only be inadequate. Furthermore, Lewis would have you believe if you are a father and you do feel confident in taking complete control of care-giving and child raising with confidence, well, then there must be something wrong with you. Because, after all,the men around you are only doing what is required of them, and begrudgingly at that, and like it this way. Well, I for one beg to vehemently disagree.

It has almost become cliche, this 'accidental guide'. The situation where the man is left with the children for only a short time, but manages to screw things up so badly that onlookers are left to wonder how the children will ever survive, only to be saved just in the nick of time by Mom. She swooshes in with her golden lasso and bullet deflecting bracelets and saves the day, but not without handing out a few back-handed comments about Dad's incompetence as a care-giver first. The crowd hardly notices Dad as he slinks off to the basement with his tail between his legs to "tinker" with something on his work bench or drink heavily in solitary confinement. No, this crowd of rubberneckers is too focused on Mom lavishing her children with copious amounts of love and affection after their near fatal incident, and think to themselves, as Mom thinks to herself, what a wonderful Mother she is, and how her children obviously "need" her every minute of everyday. Well, if I'm in this crowd of onlookers, I'm yelling "Bullshit!" at the top of my lungs. But it's this fallacy that Lewis calls Fatherhood and claims is normal.

While I agree there are obvious gender-based differences between men and women when it comes to being parents, I don't agree that it's these differences that make a Mom somehow more competent than Dad. That somehow Dad's are suppose to be less competent at providing for their children when Mom isn't around, and that's just how it is. However, I do believe, and often witness, Dad's being set-up by Mom's for failure, and when they do "fail" (or rather, just don't do things the exact same way Mom would have done them, without harm), they get chastised until they feel they are about as equipped to be a father as Pee Wee Herman. According to Lewis, with his experiences relayed in this book, that's just how it is. That may be, in your house Mr. Lewis, and in numerous households across this country, but it's not normal and NOT how it should be.

Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe, it's really a self-depreciation that occurs with this dynamic, that allows a father to shirk his real responsibilities to his children without guilt. "Oh, well, experience has shown that she's better equipped to handle this, so I'll just let her take care of it." It seems to me this can only breed contempt in a relationship. Are you serious? Somebody actually pays you to write this dribble for a magazine. I shudder to think that there are probably thousands of readers out there who have read this excrement and thought because it was presented in a funny and witty way, that it was sound advice on fatherhood.

While I have enjoyed the previous two books I've read by Lewis on two subjects he is obviously well versed in, Home Game is a huge disappointment. A gentleman much wiser than me once told me that growing up and becoming a man involved a moment or a series of moments where you stopped doing things just for you and your personal satisfaction and started doing things for the benefit of those you care for and love. Not because some outsider said you are suppose to, but because you know deep down it's what is right and what you want the most. Given his personal past (2 divorces), Lewis might want to focus on his own personal development and maturation, before passing on his questionable at best advice on family life.

[Angie Dokos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a funny book. It was very entertaining. I think all parents can relate to at least some of it. If you don’t laugh at least once, you need to get yourself a sense of humor.

[catharine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do you want to read about a guy who has a self-deprecating view of himself as a father, who yearns for an earlier age when fatherhood was all about earning the bacon and not about dealing with the casual insults that your daughters might throw in your face? Do you want to read a book by a guy who's proud of how few diapers he has changed during the lives of his three children, and read a humorous account of his wife's struggle with post-partum depression? Do you want to read about the three small brats who make him a father, but not really a good one?

Nah. Me neither.

[martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly entertaining but too much in the vein of 'bumbling sitcom dad and shrewish wife' for my taste.

+10 points for the part where someone tells him she loved his essays about his son in the Luxembourg Gardens and I thought "no, that was Adam Gopnik," just as he says "no, that was Adam Gopnik." Possibly I have read too much in the sub-sub-genre of nonfiction about raising children in Paris.

[Nancy Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I was meant to be a father. I sympathize completely with Michael Lewis's take on the divide between what men are supposed to feel upon becoming a father and what they actually do feel. "Maternal love may be instinctive," he says, "but paternal love is learned behavior." He admits to feelings of indifference, resentment and even "the odd Murderous Impulse."

Be assured, Mr. Lewis, that you're writing for a certain portion of the maternal community, too. My husband took a picture of me, post-childbirth, in which I am totally absorbed in my Dunkin Donut and pointedly ignoring the squalling bundle of whatever-that-is in the bassinet next to my hospital bed.

Mr. Lewis discovered that being forced to care for a totally dependent human being transformed his feelings into first, fondness, and then love. But all is not sweetness and light after that realization. And thank goodness for that! The author's jaded eye and comic sensibility enlivens this narrative of his perceived third-string role as a father.

I particularly enjoyed the approach of someone who is used to viewing the world through the lens of finance and business. "You would think that someone would have come up with a humane, economical method for absorbing a new child into a family," he writes. "Certainly there's billions in it for whoever does." Throughout the book, it's a clever approach to a subject that most often is treated too sentimentally.

My only caveat is that some episodes are skipped over too quickly, perhaps a result of the material's origin as a Slate series. I struggled to understand the chapter that combines an ice-skating accident with a break-in in which he loses his manuscript for this book, along with years of his other writing. On the other hand, the last chapter, about his vasectomy, was more drawn out than I could appreciate. Maybe I wasn't meant to be a dad after all.

[Bon Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the best, most amusing book about fatherhood I've ever read. And there are quite a few in my history if you care to check it. It's also a keeper. Most others are good fun, but I probably won't be coming back to them. This one, though, I will. I resonated with it from first to the last word. Situations described are almost over the top except, if you're parent, you know they're all too real. And you regret you didn't note down all the incredible stuff your own children put you through.
This book is way underrated. I have no other explanation except usual butthurty touchy feely politically overthought approach some people have in their interactions with everything around them, warranting such approach or not. And whenever does it ever?

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is expanded from an occasional series of essays Lewis published in Slate in the 2000s, responding to the births of his three children, Quinn, Dixie and Walker, and exploring the modern father’s role, especially “the persistent and disturbing gap between what I was meant to feel and what I actually felt.” It took time for him to feel more than simply mild affection for each child; often the attachment didn’t arrive until after a period of intense care (as when his son Walker was hospitalized with RSV and he stayed with him around the clock). I can’t seem to find the exact line now, but Jennifer Senior (author of All Joy and No Fun) has said something to the effect of: you don’t take care of your children because you love them; you love them because you take care of them. And that indeed seems to encapsulate Lewis’s experience.

The family lived in Paris when Quinn was tiny, and the pieces on adjusting to the French parenting style reminded me of Pamela Druckerman’s French Children Don’t Throw Food / Bringing Up Bébé. His parenting adventures take him everywhere from the delivery room to a New Orleans racetrack at Mardi Gras to a Disneyland campground. He also, intriguingly, writes about a visit paid to Roald Dahl in the writer’s later years. Even when he’s exasperated, his writing is warm and funny. I especially laughed at the account of his post-Walker vasectomy. This maybe doesn’t break any new ground in terms of gender roles and equal responsibility for children’s needs, but I expect it’s still true to the experience of a lot of hapless males, and it was an entirely entertaining read.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teaser: If you have a weak mind, are unable to turn off your "I am sooo offended brain cells", wear polyester shorts, have plastic on your furniture, and just can't bear to see a naughty word, skip this review.

Take 1: My wife and I are listening to this while driving up into Minnesota on vacation (mixed in with some of my favorite old Booknotes shows with Brian Lamb -- the guy is the best, bar none, interviewer around -- when she nods off.) She's not nodding off because of the book because it has had us laughing our heads off.

There are so many funny scenes, it's hard to pick a favorite, but I think the funniest was when, Dixie, his 3-year-old daughter runs to the defense of her 6 year-old sister who is being bothered by some older boys in the childrens' pool while Lewis is right next door in the adult wading area keeping an eye on things. "You teasing boys, you motherfucking assholes," she screams at them in his loudest voice, whereupon, the mother of one of the boys yells at her son for teaching bad words to the little girl. Lewis meanwhile, is imitating an alligator in the pool, only his eyes and ears showing. Not his kid. Priceless.

Another great episode is his camping outing with his older daughter at an amusement park where they serve a great meal for the kids, probably the only one any of the dad's had ever seen their kids eat without them whining or crying: hamburgers, chips, soda, and doughnuts. Of course, she wants her dad's sleeping bag and wants to exchange. Should be no problem except her's is 4 feet long. And it's necessary to wake dad up every 30 minutes to ask a question. And then the "fucking" birds start singing at 6 in the morning just as they drift off to sleep. Classic

Take 2 tomorrow. Finished the book shortly after leaving. If you have children, you will love this book. If not, too bad. Besides being quite funny, it has it very poignant moments. He makes a distinction between the almost instant bonding with the mother. Fathers bond more slowly, but he notes that you really never love someone until you have to care for it. The classic example was his newborn son, third child, who developed RSV (look it up) and had to spend time in the hospital to regain his strength to breath (it's a respiratory virus.) Lewis was finally so upset with the interruptions from staff to just check on his kid, waking him up and disturbing him that he barricaded the door, did the aspirations himself and checked the monitors. When a student doctor slipped in while he was in the bathroom, Lewis peremptorily threw him out. "Can't I just check him?" was the plaintive query. "No, get out." was Lewis' response. Great scene. His child got better faster too. \

I remember something happening with my daughter reminiscent of Lewis' experience. We found a book not long ago with "I hate Dad, he is so mean," carboned on the cover. My daughter, enamored of carbon paper had inadvertently permanently enshrined her feelings at that moment. Lewis' daughter did something similar, writing "Dad is so mean." But she forgot she had done it a week later.

Lots of fun to listen to with your spouse. Oh yes, the description of getting the vasectomy is classic too. As is the one where he thinks his daughter has reported to her teachers that Dad has a small penis. Very funny.

[Tate Schad · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s probably obnoxious for me to try and read every book on fatherhood I can now that I’ve got a little one to take care of — and ideally not ruin — over the next eighteen years. Home Game may be one of the best places to start.

Not everything can be a how-to book. I’ve found they all overlap about 35% of the time, and while informative, it’s impossible to know how accurate or helpful they really are until you’re in the moment, and by that point much of the information is gone in favor of gut instinct. I still find them invaluable just for background and general guidance, but books like Home Game are like sharing war stories with someone already out of the trenches. A deeper and more personal understanding of our trials and failures, and sometimes against our best efforts, our victories.

I didn’t expect the raw honesty, but god is it refreshing. And hilarious. If anything, it at least makes you feel like you couldn’t possibly be the worst dad in the world if this guy showed up to his first child’s birth hammered. And didn’t spend time with his third kid til they were seven months old and sick with RSV. Michael Lewis tells these stories with more endearment than incompentance or regret, and all of them have the tinge of a guy who’s just trying to do what he can. Even if it’s the bare minimum.

I’m only one week in, and it’s so incredibly relatable already. I like feeling that I don’t have to be a perfect parent, especially because I almost surely won’t be. None of us will. We all affect our kids in ways we can’t comprehend. Home Game is the comedic, you-can’t-make-this-up reality check to counter the floods of influencer parents hiding the mess we all know is there. I’d rather hear the horror stories and dad mistakes told with humor and heart than anything else. I should probably follow his lead and start keeping track of mine.

[Chad Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first book by Michael Lewis. He’s an absolutely fantastic writer! Hilarious, witty, thoughtful, with an outstanding vernacular and use of words.

The book itself is nothing profound, it’s just a collection of his thoughts and journals as his kids were born and some of the experiences he had while raising them. At times he makes himself out to be the dumb dad, which I’m not a huge fan of as a dad who is incredibly involved with his kids and parenting them, as one should be. Other than that, it’s incredibly enjoyable and laughable read. Fair warning, there is some occasional strong language.

[George A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of Hilarious, especially for a father. I would highly recommend this book to current or soon to be dads as it will capture some of the emotions you may have in your new or current role. Or, at least it did for me. It would also be enlightening for partners to read to get an idea of the inner machinations of a fathers psyche as he handles the roles of both partner and father.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking new-fatherly sentiments to an extreme, which can be funny or horrifying...

Depending on several factors, readers may enjoy or detest this book. I can totally see that. But just make the assumption that he's not really as detached and defeated a man as he appears, and the read is actually quite humorous. Well, maybe you do need to be a father to at least appreciate where his extreme sentiments come from, but if you can at least identify with feeling superfluous in the delivery room, trying as hard as you can to take care of The Mother's Child and still end up coming short, and think back to your Life Before Baby, you may find it humorous. Yes, if you take him literally (see: Murderous Impulse), it could be frightening, but I don't.




Recommend borrowing a copy. It's short; you won't put too much wear into the book. It's a bit steep at $14 paperback.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have enjoyed most of what I've read by Michael Lewis...well, at least his writings that aren't about high finance. In Home Game he takes it to a whole new level. On most days Lewis doesn't seem the type to win 'Parent of the Year' awards, but throughout this book he gives a highly engaging, hilarious, and ultimately heartwarming take on life as a father of young kids (mostly daughters). I suspect anyone who has ever been one will find this take very familiar. There were times when I thought he had read my mind or lived my life or at the very least had spent a morning dressing my daughter for school rather than his own. A great read - and great encouragament for all us inept dads...we can still muddle through without screwing up our kids too badly, even if they do look like hobos when we dress them for school!

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hilarious account of learning to be a father in the 21st century. I actually gave this book to a guy friend of mine who is struggling with the idea of marriage and fatherhood in the near future, and he stayed up all night reading and laughing, which is amazing since he's even more of a reluctant reader than he is a reluctant grownup. Myself, I was able to read it in just a few hours--it's light and amusing but makes some real points about the naturalness of maternity versus the learned behavior of paternity. This should make a fun gift for any expectant or new father this coming Fathers Day.

[Daniel Pink · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of parenting tales. But Michael Lewis is so friggin' good, I'll read anything he writes -- including this fun little trifle of a book. Lewis's vignettes here about being a dad are hilarious, authentic, and pitch perfect.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

My wife got me this book for our sixth anniversary a couple months after we found out we were pregnant with our first. I read it in two sittings by a pool in Tucson. It was a great pool read, light and anecdotal - Lewis shared just a few select stories for each of his three children's infancies. It was insightful into fatherhood in the same way that reading three randomly dated newspapers from the year 2001 would be insightful into the year 2001. Lewis waxed concrete, not general and especially not poetic, and that worked just fine.

In the acknowledgments section at the end of the book I discovered that Lewis had already shared most of these stories in a series of short Slate articles over the course of eight years in the early 2000s. Based on the book's style I was not surprised by this, and in fact I give Lewis and his manager kudos for realizing that this patchwork journalism merited a book, a mini payday and a marginally wider audience. This goes along with a piece of advice from a former graduate professor of mine, one of the best I've ever received: Every sentence you write you should be able to use three times. Michael Lewis, modern man, modern father, thank you for sharing your jottings for $13.95. It was worth it for both parties.

The simple act of taking care of a living creature, even when you don't want to, maybe especially when you don't want to, is transformative. A friend of mine who adopted his two children was asked by a friend of his how he could ever hope to love them as much as if they were his own. "Have you ever owned a dog?" he said. And that's the nub of the matter: All the little things that you must do for a helpless creature to keep it alive cause you to love it. Most people know this instinctively. For someone like me, who has heretofore displayed a nearly superhuman gift for avoiding unpleasant tasks, it comes as a revelation.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly I stopped reading this trash after a few chapters, but am marking it as read so I can leave a review ... This felt like it was written in the 60s by a bitter and entitled husband/father. I totally lost respect for Michael Lewis after reading the first few chapters where he constantly complains about having to dedicate time and energy as a father to his own child when he already does so much by earning the money. He literally started a chapter by saying men were suckers for modernizing to have a role in child rearing, and he believes society "looks with distain" at dads pushing strollers. What world is this guy living in?!?

[Erik Tanouye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this book in the Used Donation store attached to the Beacon, NY library. In the store, I noticed on the back that the cover photo was taken by Tabitha Soren. I was interested that the former MTV news person had started doing book cover photography. Then I flipped through the book and saw on the last page that she was thanked, since she is Michael Lewis's wife and the mother of his three children (who the book is about). I hadn't known that! Anyway, I'm not sure if she was ever able to locate the loneliest monk.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very funny. I’m not sure how much I got out of it, though it’s insightful to hear about people‘s life experiences. The characters are mostly stereotypes — the lazy, clueless dad; the competent but needy and emotional wife; and the bratty children. That’s where a lot of the humor comes from, and it really is funny, if also somewhat problematic.

[Keenan Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was given to me by a friend as a welcome to fatherhood gift. As always, Michael Lewis is entertaining and finds the humor in raising kids. Probably better suited to read for your second child but a couple snippets of wisdom that make it worthwhile.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Lewis meets Erma Bombeck. I listened to it on Audible, so my standards are lower then if I had read this. I found it mildly amusing but for completists (of Michael Lewis or memoirs of childraising) only.

[J Lippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute, quick listen. Audible guy was good.

Spoke to more of the funny observational / emotional aspects of being dad. Cracked me up multiple times!

ONE Thing: the husband is a wallflower in hospital for delivery. Don’t try to play role other than shutting up and supporting wife :)

[James Helwing · Rating 2 out of 5]

“A hero to my wife. A traitor to my sex. A thoroughly modern American guy”

This quote is after the author underwent a vasectomy at the will of his wife. I believe that this thought process of what it means to be a man in the modern day is why I did not connect with this book. The author old school views are portrayed as edgy or irreverent. I understand that I read this book 15 years after it was wrote however, the way the author views parenting and the roles he and wife have in raising a child frustrate me.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that Michael Lewis does a good job no matter what he writes! An interesting look at his experiences of being a father.

[David Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly entertaining and funny

[Aj Greenman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short yet very clever little book. I enjoyed the authors point of view and thought his humor was tasteful and very funny.

[Peter Schutz]

A family is like a stereo system: A stereo system is only as good as its weakest component, and a family is only as happy as its unhappiest member.

[Patrick Corpora · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun, light read of one man’s perspective of being a father. Mostly anecdotal in nature, there were some humorous stories but left me wanting more.