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191 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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.