Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

by Michael Lewis

Overview

The New York Times bestseller: “Hilarious. No mushy tribute to the joys of fatherhood, Lewis’ book addresses the good, the bad, and the merely baffling about having kids.”—Boston Globe

When Michael Lewis became a father, he decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded, from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Lewis is so unusual. It’s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393338096
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/07/2010
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Editorial Reviews

From the first laugh-out-loud anecdote about his toddler daughter fending off bully boys with words that make Lewis blush and beam, to his wife's nightmarish postpartum depression, he illustrates the life of a modern-day dad who is, yes, much more hands-on than his father, but who still tries to justify not spending time with his second infant after birth…it's similar to Anne Lamott's wonderful Operating Instructions. It's hard to believe anything could compare to her painfully and wonderfully honest book about the first year of her son's life. But here it is. And in a dad's voice, no less. How so not our father's generation.
—The Washington Post

Amy Joyce

Like Christopher Buckley writing, at the other end of the life cycle, about his parents' deaths in Losing Mum and Pup, Mr. Lewis buffers any discomfort with urbane polish and storytelling skill. Both books manage to be bright and blithe while describing some of the most earthshaking events in their authors' lives.
—The New York Times

Janet Maslin

Lewis (The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, 2006, etc.) updates and expands his Slate series on the business of parenting. After the birth of each of his three children, the author promptly drew up notes on how he tried manfully to fill the demanding job of fatherhood. As wife and family CEO Tabitha provided guidance, the generally inattentive and distracted Lewis recorded the nuttiness of raising daughters Quinn and Dixie and their little brother Walker. It's an engaging journal that selectively details how Dad grew up as well, as caution replaced airy hope and emotion displaced rationality. The first child was, for a while, subjected to the vicissitudes of living in Paris and Gallic notions of childrearing; the French experience seems to have made her a cool analyst of any situation. Back stateside, a second girl was born and sibling rivalry erupted. In California, the couple's third child arrived, and Dad elucidates the effects of scant sleep, management of Mom's postpartum melancholy and infant Walker's frightening illness. "If you want to feel the way you're meant to feel about the new baby," writes Lewis, "you need to do the grunt work." Only with eternal vigilance can fathers insure the well-being and personal development of their progeny. Lewis also follows the trail explored by Dr. Cosby and others investigators of fatherhood, and he includes a riff on his personal surgery-no more children are expected in the Lewis household. Brief, clever and frank-a good gift for Father's Day. Author tour to New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Denver, Portland, Ore., Washington, D.C.

Kirkus Reviews

"Unabashedly frank, hilarious and sweetly sentimental....a somewhat daring and in many ways groundbreaking book about what it’s like to be a father in modern America....intensely honest."— Amy Scribner BookPage

"It’s an engaging journal that selectively details how Dad grew up as well....Brief, clever and frank—a good gift for Father’s Day."— Kirkus Reviews

"He captures serious issues with a warmth that shows he's a pretty good dad after all."— Kyle Smith People Magazine

"His reflections capture both the unease and the excitement that fatherhood brings."— Publishers Weekly

"Lewis is an insouciant raconteur who can spin out even standard dad stories (about, say, sending a kid to school dressed outlandishly) without making them sound stale."— Ann Hulbert Slate

"Lewis's style is funny, frank, and engaging, and he gets a lot of comic mileage telling tales at his own expense....it's refreshing to hear a dad describe so vividly the uglier aspects of the job."— Christopher Noxon The Los Angeles Times

"Lewis writes memorable, insightful, yet simple and brisk sentences as easily as the rest of us breathe."— Marc Tracy The New York Times Book Review

"Home Game, which was adapted from a series of Slate essays and is an accordingly zippy read, is hilarious but painfully candid, one man’s uneasy reckoning with the potentially devastating consequences of parenting. It’s unsparing, but Lewis is as honest with himself as he’s been with his subjects. Grade: A-."— The Onion AV Club

From the Publisher