Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

This book contains a handfull of excellent fatherhood tips and warnings you must tale into account. And thats it. The rest is a collection of very well told stories about a father struggling to survive. Doesnt feel quite like a survival guide either though, and it couldve been. This book is centered around the particular stories that made parenhood difficult and amusing for the author, some of which may necer apply to you. At any rate, it was an ok, fast paced read.

Micheal Lewis has hit another home run! A brief book about fatherhood, this one reads like butter. Can be read in one or two sittings quite easily. Lewis is taking a break from writing about weightier subjects such as money and ...um....football, and tackles what for most is the most important job of their lives: fatherhood.

Lewis is obviously a loving and devoted father, but admits uncomfortable truths about his feelings toward newborn children: they are kinda needy!

A refreshing and delightful effort from a man who can make just about any undertaking fascinating.

Very highly recommended for all readers!

To read Michael Lewis’s ruminations on any subject is a pleasure; to review his contemporaneous reflections on new parenthood leaves me with only one complaint: why so short? (He was working on some silly baseball book, apparently.) Like any memoir, “Home Game” offers up some universal experiences and emotions, and others that will resonate with only a subset of readers. Some stories find humor while others most prominently feature commiserable defeat. While Lewis brings his formidable storytelling talent - one characterized by the rare ability to be simultaneously intelligent and easygoing - to the task, his greatest accomplishment may be in providing an honest, open, and balanced paternal voice (most daddy books are either ridiculously sunny and boastful or totally Negative Nancy). I found myself craving more, and not in a good way; this handful of five-star blog posts left me with the urge to head over to Berkeley and stage a sit-in on Lewis’s doorstep, refusing to depart until he agrees to write a parenting retrospective.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

“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, approved by all, to be practiced with ease by the perfect fathers of the future. But for now there’s an unsettling absence of universal, or even local, standards of behavior. Within a few miles of my house I can find perfectly sane men and women who regard me as a Neanderthal who should do more to help my poor wife with the kids, and just shut up about it. But I can also find other perfectly sane men and women who view me as a Truly Modern Man and marvel aloud at my ability to be both breadwinner and domestic dervish - doer of an approximately 31.5 percent of all parenting. The absence of acknowledged standards is the social equivalent of the absence of an acknowledged fair price for a good in a marketplace. At best, it leads to haggling; at worst, to market failure.”

“[W]ith my incompetence in dealing with matters critical to my child’s survival fully exposed, I was once again well loved. Some sort of natural order had been restored.”

“[W]e were walking up and down the hospital halls to accelerate her labor to the point where it generated the respect of the women who doled out delivery rooms.”

“I reckon that Tabitha averages maybe three hours of sleep each night, broken up into forty-five-minute chunks. I get more like five broken hours, and while I should be pleased about that, I am, in truth, pissed off. That’s what happens when you don’t sleep properly for long stretches: You get pissed off. At any rate, that’s what happens to me. My wife grows melancholy.”

“I get home and find my wife in tears. Often I try to hide, but usually she spots me, and when she does, she will usually say something poignant. ‘I feel like I am going through this alone,’ for instance. Or, ‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’ Whatever she says neatly undercuts my belief that I am carrying far more than my share of our burden . . . .”

“‘Once you lose good habits you can’t get them back,’ she said. Never having had good habits myself, I was poorly situated to argue the point, and if I had, I wouldn’t have been believed.”

“The thing that most surprised me about fatherhood the first time around was how long it took before I felt about my child what I was expected to feel. Clutching Quinn after she exited the womb, I was able to generate tenderness and a bit of theoretical affection, but after that, for a good six weeks, the best I could manage was detached amusement. The worst was hatred. I distinctly remember standing on a balcony with Quinn squawking in my arms and wondering what I would do if it wasn’t against the law to hurl her off it. I also recall convincing myself that official statistics dramatically overstated the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome - when an infant dies for no apparent reason in her crib - because most of them were probably murder. The reason we all must be so appalled by parents who murder their infants is that it is so easy and even natural to do.”

“One of the many surprising things to me about fatherhood is how it has perverted my attitude toward risk. It is true that there are many kinds of risk - emotional, social, financial, physical. But I can’t think of any I enjoy taking more than I did before I had children . . . .”

“The ideal Berkeley birth has probably never actually happened, but if it has, it happened far from civilization, in the woods, without painkillers or doctors or any intervention whatsoever by modern medicine. Along one side of the birthing mother was a wall of doulas wailing a folk song; along the other, all the people she had ever known; at her feet, a full-length mirror, in which she watched her baby emerging; at her head, a mother wolf, licking and suckling. Incense-filled urns released meaningful, carbon-free odors. The placenta was saved and, if not grilled, recycled.”

“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. Occasionally that is me; more often it is someone else; and so I must remain vigilant, lest the pleasure of my own life be dampened by their unhappiness.”

“With that she scrambles gleefully up and into the space between mother and father, and proves again that a California king-sized bed is so big that it can comfortably sleep three adults or one six-year-old child.”

This is an honest book about fatherhood, which is rare.

Most fatherhood books are sappy and filled with love at first sight introductions to children.

Michael is honest, he focuses on the growth of love over time. The small interactions that build a bond between fathers and children.

A short read that is well worth your time if you always found the movies and description of fatherhood to be disingenuous.

Of course admitting any of this can cause a lot of trouble with mothers, so be careful.

"The thing that most surprised me about fatherhood the first time around was how long it took before I felt about my child what I was expected to feel. Clutching Quinn after she exited the womb, I was able to generate tenderness and a bit of theoretical affection, but after that, for a good six weeks, the best I could manage was detached amusement. The worst was hatred." Now that's funny! -- hyperbolic, overstated perhaps, but really quite funny. Because in ways it is not polite to emphasize, it's right on the mark about how much at sea --and how harrassed at momemtns-- a new father can feel. It just isn't easy being a new father. The role isn't as defined (and it's nowhere as central as the mother's, and babies don't understand how much change they have brought to their parents' lives --they cry, need food, poop, need diapers changed, or need to be burped, or have colic or some unexplainable but absolutely terrifying ailment that goes away just about the time you get them to the doctor's. No parenting manual prepares one for parenthood. The poor father doesn't even have hormonal help to tide him over the hard first months.

Three-time new father Michael Lewis wrote this book inbetween his other books, the ones, as he writes, that paid the bills. Disregard the subtitle: this is not a guide for anything. Rather, it's a loose collection of occasional humorous essays written on the fly while distracted from his other writing (the bill-paying writing, mind you) by the demands of parenting. The essays originally appeared in Slate magazine and are collected under the headings, "Quinn", "Dixie" and "Walker," the names of his three children. Lewis's more outrageous comments may enrage the literal-minded reader, especially if she is a mother, but they're not false observations, just hyperbolically expressed.

Nor do they all deal with the newest born: Quinn and then Dixie have an interesting take on how to drive their parents nuts after the newborn arrives. Thus, Dixie (the middle child), anticipating Walker's birth: "Hardly a day has passed in months without melodramatic suffering. One afternoon I collected Dixie from her preschool ... and learned that she'd moped around the playground until a teacher finally asked her what was troubling her. 'When the baby comes, my parents won't love me as much,' she'd said. Asked where she'd gotten that idea from, she said, 'My big sister told me.'" Writes Lewis comment: "I've sometimes felt that we're using the wrong manual to fix an appliance--that say, we're trying to repair a washing machine with the instructions for the lawnmower.... A family is like a stereo system: A stereo system is only as good as its weakest component, and a family is onlys happy as its unhappiest member. Occasionally that is me; more often it is someone else; and so I must remain vigilant, lest the pleasure of my own life be dampened by their unhappiness."

This is a funny, not very deep book that will strike a chord in many fathers breasts, though they will strive manli(ly) to deny it.

As of writing this review, I am just one fleeting month away from becoming a father myself. The timing of this book for me couldn't be more relevant. In Home Game, Michael Lewis' first-person account has his usual refined mix of wit and hit-over-the-head realism, though I suspect that just beneath the surface of the hilarity and the tender moments you'll find an exhausted man teetering on the edge of severe depression.

Becoming a parent is one of the BIG things I've looked forward to nearly all my life. I know the trail is fraught with sleepless nights, compromises and many other countless unknowns, but I still want this experience, this adventure, as part of my time on this earth more than ever.

The first book I read from Michael Lewis was Moneyball. I was captivated by his ability to weave a story around a set of interesting, sometimes controversial, characters. Since that time, I have read all of his books, and have been delighted by each one. This book, Home Game, is a relatively short personal account of his relationship with his children. It is an exploration of the joys and humor of fatherhood. As a father myself, I can relate to many of his stories. In summary, I found this book to a quick and enjoyable read, and I highly recommend it. For those interesting in similar books by Mr. Lewis, I would recommend the book “Coach” which is a short, heartwarming story about the relationship between Mr. Lewis and his high school baseball coach.

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."

The reviews stating "quick read" and "if you're a father you should read this" ring true. It is a quick read, and being a father, the relation is evident. I saw myself in Lewis's shoes several times and laughed out loud, something I rarely do when reading.

It will be a challenge for fans of Michael Lewis to put this up on the same pedestal as his other works, but it should also be clear that he wasn't trying to do that. You won't find any research or reference except in a few passages where he does what all fathers do, compare themselves to their own dad.

If you're not a father, you'll still get a kick out of reading how Lewis navigates the often murky waters between doing what's right for his children and trying to be a great partner to his wife. My sister-in-law actually gave me the book to read, saying it was laugh-out-loud funny and right up my alley. She was right on both accounts.

You get the feeling that this book is not just about his experiences of fatherhood, but an ode to his children. He writes about his experiences with being a dad, and a husband, and how life changes for him each time one of his children comes into the world.

To confirm, it's a quick read. If you're a father you'll relate and enjoy it.

I first discovered Michael Lewis when reading Moneyball. I like analytic type non-fiction and was intrigued with the analysis and application to sports and business. Then I picked up The Blind Side expecting a similar sports stats book. The first chapter (or maybe the introduction) started out talking salaries and stats but then I was taken on a very different ride. At first I wasn't sure since I was expecting something else but then Lewis pulled me into the story. I loved it. Now I just finished the audio book version of Home Game. I think this book is another example of Lewis' versatility as a writer. I laughed so hard in the car at some of the stories that I backtracked to listen to them again. (I loved the description of the alligator in the pool! Been there! Done that!). To me this book was like one of those movies that you enjoy just for the pure entertainment value. I probably won't change any of my parenting skills as a result but it sure was fun vicariously parenting young kids again. (My youngest is headed to college in a few months.)

Short and very entertaining read. I'm not a father, or even expecting to become one soon, but picked up this book based on my past experience of Michael Lewis's work - happy to report, I wasn't disappointed. Already recommended this book to several friends with a family, all of which thoroughly enjoyed the read as well.

"Home Game" is not a parenting book by any stretch of imagination. Rather, it documents the daily psychological state of the author and the turmoil his family went through as they raised the kids. If anything, it's a great glimpse into the "other side of parenthood". After all, what could be more joyful than raising the kids, right? You're in for a treat!

Don't believe the crummy reviewers--this is a good book by a talented writer. I'd give it 5 stars, but I'm stingy and reserve those only for my stuck-on-a-deserted island books. What I like about his writing style is that while it is clear and unfettered, it still retains a cadence that is pleasing to the ear. He throws in a few $10 words now and then, which is good because it offers a challenge. Content-wise I found myself laughing--how can you not crack up at his vasectomy story? The book reads very quickly and follows a natural trajectory. He is not a bad father; he's just a brutally honest one. I like that.

Definitely not Michael Lewis' best but a good read nonetheless. This book is an offshoot of the journals that the author maintained on his children's birth and growing up. Will appeal to new fathers who will relate to most of the stuff. The book is remarkably candid and most of the time, you (assuming you have been a father) will chuckle to yourself as Michael spills the beans on another well maintained secret of new fatherhood.

Sometimes, you get the impression that there isn't much to the book and you already know all the stuff. That for me is not a limitation but the hall mark of a well written book.

It is important to set the right expectations with this book. It is not in the same league as Moneyball or Liar's Poker because of the subject in question. Michael's children have had a regular birth and childhood( touchwood). Wall Street and professional baseball have simply been more eventful.

One piece of advice through. Never ever talk to your wife about this book.

Michael Lewis cobbled together essays he did for Slate over the past few years, added a few more family anecdotes and published a book titled Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Lewis' writing is lively and entertaining as he shares his personal experiences of being a father. Some of the funniest episodes are like ones that any parent might tell around a picnic or dinner table at an extended family gathering to the amusement of all. The paternal cluelessness Lewis exposes on these pages will be familiar to any wife and mother. Home Game is a breezy reading experience that can be read easily in bursts, separated by a chance to laugh, smirk, or dive into the pool.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

My brother-in-law introduced me to Michael Lewis' work a few years ago. I'm not into Sports, but his writing made me appreciate the game of football in The Blind Side. So, when I caught a glimpse of Home Game, I was delighted to see what he had to say about raising his children. I sat at the bookstore and read a few pages and immediately I was crying as a result of laughing at his description of events. In Home Game, the pool scene where his youngest daughter yells profanity (in a disorganized fashion) at the older boys was shocking, but absolutely funny to read Michael's reaction or should I say, lack of reaction. It was nice to read an honest account of a father's perception of things, rather than the sugar-coated versions of daddy's little girl stories we hear about all the time (I won't lie, I am one of them - daddy's little - but, oh-so-grown- girl:)). It's nice to hear what my dad would have really thought, had he the chance the express them in writing.

Michael's humor reminded me of a book I'd recently read called Nine Weeks: a teacher's education in Army Basic Training. I'm not a teacher, but Rich Stowell's description of events during his nine weeks at Basic Training had me in tears - as a result of laughing, of course. A teacher, Rich left his classroom to join a platoon that could have been his students' weeks earlier. The interactions, coupled with the humorous fraternity-like experiences that would otherwise remain secret, are shared with the readers in a witty and honest fashion. Nine Weeks is a wonderful account of what our men and women in uniform experience before adorning the title of a Soldier. If you enjoy Michael Lewis' writing style, with historical facts, you'll enjoy Nine Weeks too!

Obviously he’s an astounding business writer. I didn’t know he’d done this book, and honestly it’s mostly really ‘just’ a collection of his columns. But still: amazing: brilliant read for the first break you get after becoming a new dad. I’m too scared to suggest my baby-momma read it; instead I’m just reading her the excerpts.

This is not just the best humorous look at fatherhood ever written. It's quite possibly the funniest book ever written period. I can't stop laughing out loud, even in public! People think I'm nuts on the light rail train as I keep laughing while reading story after story. I have let every father I know that they need to run not walk to the nearest book store (or the store) to get this. It speaks directly to the feelings all of us fathers have felt at one time or another, and to the internal conflict we may experience for having those sometimes politically incorrect feelings. I am now re-reading it out loud to my wife and she is loving it.
Truly funny, a must read for all dads (and most moms too)

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.

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.

Michael Lewis pretty much nails the joys and pains of child rearing in a very thoughtful and humorous manner. Self deprecating and honest Lewis details many of the fears he and many fathers have about raising kids. Based on a series of articles he did for Slate magazine, my only complaint was that the book wasn't longer

Michael Lewis is a good story teller. He makes exaggeration sound believable and sarcasms natural. It is actually the same old story: a you little bastard who tortures me, exploit me and never pay back or even say thank you but I still love you kind of story. The problems for him are nothing new, even for a 22 year college student who probably won't have anything to do with babies in 10 years and have never had a younger sibling or any babysitting experience. Yes, the baby cries; the baby swears; the baby gets sick. Don't they all do? Well, you took your kid gambling, big deal? My parents got me drunk when I was three and they found it joke. My dad put me on backseat of his bike when he was drunk and even better, he was riding on road with ice and snow. How does that sound? Vasectomy is not that a big deal either. He sounds like he never masturbates before. But the idea of doing that in a parking lot ever coming to his mind is quite astonishing. At the part, I think he tried to hard to be funny. Well, to conclude, nothing much new about the new parents' story, told in a humorous way, but trying to hard sometimes. But if you are parents, you probably will not find out. You all exaggerate, right?

A quick read Michael Lewis captures one man's journey through fatherhood with humor and insight. Similar in presentation to his others books I enjoyed the detour from the often serious nature of his other books.

As a grandparent, I loved reading this. It made me laugh to remember all the equally maddening times of raising children, and gave me much greater empathy for my children now raising children of their own. The stories are remarkably honest as well as endearing! Thank goodness, we are in a time when fathers get to share the priviledge, work, and joys of bringing up their kids.

As a collection on columns it feels choppy, hence the four star rating. The writing is five star quality and I loved Michael's honesty about himself as well as his kids. A great read for a parent or one considering the adventure.

I loved Liars Poker, and the writing is excellent. However, the entire book is shot through with a kind of self-loathing. Lewis is endlessly self-deprecating -- he's always the fool, the incompetent, the one his wife treats with disdain, and father who doesn't know what to do. It's kind of sad.

His wife sounds like a complete bitch, frankly. She is constantly demanding that he acede to whatever ridiculous whim she comes up with (swimming classes for infants, Gymboree, natural childbirth (incense and having a doula in the delivery room, for example) and, it seems, constantly berating him for his never-ending mistakes.

At least one of his daughters sounds absolutely awful. She screams obscenities in public, destroys things deliberately (a photograph album) and insults Lewis.

This is the story of a guy who seems to lack even the most basic self-respect.

So often books gloss over the messiness of parenthood. Michael Lewis does not. He embraces all the craziness, the annoyance, and most importantly the beauty and love that children inspire in their parents... with edgy humor that I adored.

HOME GAME:An Accidential Guide
To Fatherhood
Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10110
ISBN: 978-0-393-06901-3
$23.95 - Hardback
190 pages

HOME GAME: An Accidential Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis is an honest account of one father's experience with raising his children. While most fathers' would "think" what Lewis is saying, most of them would mute the actual words.

This work is written in three parts, each part dedicated to one of Lewis's children. His account of the birthing process is hilarious. He states, "A woman in labor needs to believe, however much evidence she has to the contrary, that the man in waiting beside her bed is directing every ounce of his concern toward her. He learns to camouflage trips to the john as grape juice-fetching missions, When he is hungry he waits until his wife dozes off, then nips furtively down to the hospital vending machine for his supper of Ring Dings and Nacho Cheese Doritos." He continues to say that no one really cares how Dad is doing, nor, do they care about his fatigue, his worries, his tedium, his disappointment at the contents of the hospital vending machine - these are better unmentioned. Above all, he must know that if his mask of perfect selflessness slips for even a moment he will be nabbed.

His account of his daughter's encounter with older boys who try to ruin her and her sister's day at the pool is so funny that I had to put the book down until I could get control of my laughter.

What Lewis actually says is what we all have felt at some period in parenting our children. However, we are not brave enough to put our feelings in print. So, I am awed by Michael Lewis's ability to just put it all out there for his readers.

Any new parent should read this book, male or female. It will help you to realize that there is no wrong way to parent, just do your best and the children usually become reasonable people.

This would make a good gift for new parents, anyone wanting to read a light-hearted family book or a man who has been asked by his wife to have a vasectomy. Don't ask, just read the book.

It brought back great memories of the best and worst moments of raising my kids. It helped me understand their father's perspective too. I laughed til I cried at several parts. Michael Lewis is a wonderfully gifted writer, no matter what the topic.

After reading this book, I was left with a nagging feeling of disappointment. Sure, this is a fun book to read with some memorable and amusing quotes, but it pales in comparison with Michael Lewis' other work (like The Blind Side, or even his memorable recent article on Iceland in Vanity Fair, see link below). There is very little research here, and one is left with a feeling of "is this all he has to say after raising three kids?" The book feels like a hastily-put-together compilation of short and loosely-related essays, a deadline-driven book. Perhaps my expectations are to blame here, and this could have been great as a New Yorker article (or if it had remained a series of Slate articles), but from a book I was expecting more: more Michaelinian insights, more Lewisian ideas, more substance, more lessons.

[...]

The book was entertaining. If you want an entertaining book that doesn't really tell you what you SHOULD be doing as a dad, this may be for you. It reads more like a 'Here are some funny experiences I had as a dad that hopefully you won't go through.' However, there's very little actual advice for first time dads on how to be a good dad and what to expect.
So, if you're looking for a book with helpful advice, I'd go with "We're Pregnant: First-Time Dad's Pregnancy Handbook". If you're just looking for something that's funny and easy to read, go with this book.