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Book-of-the-Month... JULY 2006 |
Wisdom of Our Fathers:
Lessons and Letters
from Daughters and Sons
By
Tim Russert
© 2006
 What
does it really mean to be a good father? What did
your father tell you, that has stayed with you
throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a
story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are?
Is there a special memory that makes you smile when you
least expect it?
After the publication of Tim Russert’s number one New
York Times bestseller about his father,
Big Russ and Me: Father
and Son--Lessons of Life, he received an avalanche of letters from
daughters and sons who wanted to tell him about their
own fathers, most of whom were not superdads or
heroes but ordinary men who were remembered and
cherished for some of their best moments–of advice,
tenderness, strength, honor, discipline, and occasional
eccentricity.
Most of these daughters and sons were eager to express
the gratitude they had carried with them through the
years. Others wanted to share lessons and memories and,
most important, pass them down to their own children.
This book is for all fathers, young or old, who
can learn from the men in these pages how to get it
right, and to understand that sometimes it is the
little gestures that can make the big difference
for your child. For some in this book, the appreciation
came later than they would have liked. But as Wisdom
of Our Fathers reminds us, it is never too
late to embrace it.
From the father who coached his daughter in sports (and
life), attending every meet, game, performance, and
tournament, to the daughter who, after a fifteen-year
estrangement, learned to make peace with her difficult
father just before he died, to the son who came, at
last, to appreciate the silent way his father could show
affection, Wisdom of Our Fathers shares rewarding
lessons, immeasurable gifts, and lasting values.
Heartfelt, humorous, engaging, irresistibly readable,
and bound to bring back memories of unforgettable
moments with our own fathers, Tim Russert’s new book is
not only a fitting companion to his own marvelous
memoir, but also a celebration of the positive qualities
passed down from generation to generation.
EDITORIAL REVIEW
This book by "The Grand Inquisitor" of
Meet the Press, is largely what you would expect - a
variety of touching vignettes from sons and daughters
throughout America written about both big and little
moments with their fathers that became big life lessons
for them. Most of them are largely positive - a father
telling his daughter that he would marry her if he could
to help her get over a break-up with her boyfriend, the
touching response of another father to his son telling
him that he was gay, one son even using memories of
learning to shave with his dad as a child to get over
the post-traumatic stress of being a crime victim -
specifically the scars from the attack that he saw on
his face each morning as he was shaving.
However, don't let that make you shy
away from this book even if your father was not a great
person. There are other letters where the writer has had
a terrible role model, such as one man whose father was
largely absent from his life due to his chronic drug
addiction who ultimately died in a hotel room of an
overdose when the man was still a child. The lesson that
this son got from his father - "My father missed out on
getting to know a terrific son". Thus, there really is
something in this book for everyone no matter what your
relationship with your father is or was. I highly
recommend it, especially if you liked Russert's book
about his relationship with his own father - "Big Russ
and Me", since it was the publishing of that book that
caused all of the people with stories in this book to
write to Russert describing their own experiences with
their fathers.
ANONYMOUS REVIEWER
PREVIOUS ARTICLES ABOUT FATHERS
BOOKS ABOUT FATHERS AND FATHERING |
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Columns, Articles and Men's Issues News... |
MEN'S NEWS TICKER © 2000 - Disable pop-up blocker
and click on headline for story details
Excerpt from Wisdom of our Fathers...
by Tim Russert
Small Moments...
One thing I'll never forget
about my father a hard-as-nails tough-love man who fought in two
world wars and a war in Africa during the twenties-was the single
tear running down his cheek the day he dropped me off at Fort Dix on
my way to Vietnam, and the one hug that made up for twenty-two years
of no hugging. Only he could understand what the coming year had in
store for me. He couldn't even share his sorrow with my mother.
Because of her weak heart, we told her I was going to a missile base
in Guam. It seemed as if all the years of absence from each other's
lives came together at that moment in New Jersey. We finally shared
a bond no one else in my family could ever understand, father to
son, man to man, soldier to soldier.
Go to
Excerpt
Guest Article...
by Glenn Sacks
Why Fathers Matter...
A
wealth of research confirms that fathers play a unique and
important role in their children’s lives. Nevertheless, powerful
forces in our society try to marginalize fathers. Unfortunately,
these misguided individuals can be difficult to educate. With
Father’s Day upon us, it’s worth another try.
Go to
Article
Men's Worklife...
by
Marty Nemko
The Importance of Goals Later in Life...
Many older people seem to derive
pleasure mainly by reminiscing or by waiting for their children to
call. That is a formula for unhappiness, for feeling your life is
essentially over.
Go to Article
COYOTE...
monthly column by Dick Prosapio
Ruminating on Fathers
Day...
Sure I
wish my father was around to be the recipient of the things I'd
get him for Father's Day. Appropriate things, now that I know
what he'd really want. Of course I didn't discover what those
things were until I began using them myself. Things like
cordless drills, a Skil saw, a laser level (fun concept but
actually useless) a good set of screwdrivers or small ratchet
set. Hell! If I thought it would bring him back I'd buy him a
Subaru Forester. He'd love it.
Go to Article
THE NEW
INTIMACY... monthly column by
Judith Sherven, Ph.D. and James
Sniechowski, Ph.D.
Suffering from Negative Head-talk?...
Nearly everyone does battle with that
pesky voice of self-judgment and sabotaging put-downs that chatters
away in our heads.
Go to Article
JEFF'S LIFE... monthly
column by Jeff Stimpson
Once More, Once
More to the Lake...
We spend Father's Day at
grandpa's lake house. In the afternoon, I hope to take out
grandpa's sleek kayak while Jill takes the boys in the rowboat
and we all play "Surfaced U-Boat Stalks Lost Allied Merchantman
on Father's Day, 1941," but instead Jill takes Alex to some mall
and Ned and I go fishing in grandpa's canoe.
Go to Article
DADS, DON'T FIX YOUR KIDS...
monthly column by
Mark Brandenburg,
M.A
Fathers vs.
Mothers
Parenting
Style...
Fathers
and mothers parent differently. It is a reflection of the
differences between men and women. It is also the source of a
great deal of conflict between parents. Fathers take an approach
with their kids that’s more “blunt,” and that reflects their
concerns with preparing them for the real world. Mothers take an
approach that reflects their concern with their kids’ feelings,
and how they’re doing in the world of relationships with others.
Go to Article
TOWARD MANHOOD...
A book in progress by Larry Pesavento
From chapter 17... Part
2 -
Recontracting In the Wilderness
 Today,
the marriage commitment calls for a true lifetime commitment rather
than the life-stage commitment of our forebears. Cultural and
religious expectations have not changed, even though practice has.
Most marriages must go through several more adult life-stages if they
endure to death, many more than earlier marriages. Each transition
to another stage has the seeds of a crisis. Each crisis carries the
possibility of initiatory transformation.
Read
Chapter
|
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Men's Book Reviews by J. Steven Svoboda |
LATEST
REVIEWS
REVIEW:
Straight Talk for Men about Marriage:
What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know
About Men)
By Martin G. Friedman ©2006
The author has put together an appealingly presented, male-friendly
guide to improving the quality of our marriages. As Friedman is the
first to point out, this isn’t exactly rocket science. We need to
learn to do the basics. A marriage is a path to learning about
ourselves. Projecting our discontent onto our spouse doesn’t do
either of us any favors.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Self-Made Man:
One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back Again
By Norah Vincent
Norah Vincent has produced a new
book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess
all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a
black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and
barriers he discovered. Author Vincent tries to do the same thing
for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed
male bastions to report on what she discovers.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Smart Couple’s Guide to the
Wedding of Your Dreams:
Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
By
By Judith
Sherven and James Sniechowski
Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists
and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages
(The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be
Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on
their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The
Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a
narrower subject than any of their three previous books. But
actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing
skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their
latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of
wedding guides. Not seeing a book that went beyond the
technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the
event, they took the plunge and wrote it!
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Partnering: A
New Kind of Relationship
By Hal Stone and Sidra Stone
© 2006
Hal and Sidra Stone are, like Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski
(whose latest book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) a
husband-and-wife psychologist team who have written a number of
books and who travel the world giving workshops on their techniques
for improving one’s life and relationships. Partnering does
not represent a stunning advance on the authors’ previous work but
it does expand, in the specific context of relationships, on the
work they have helped pioneer in exploring the multiple selves each
of us contains through the voice dialogue technique.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and
Reconciliation in an American Family.
By Jon DuPre.
Jon DuPre’s achievement with “The Prodigal Father” is stupefying.
What this correspondent for Fox Network News has done is so simple:
He has told the story of his family of origin, consisting of two
brothers, himself, and his mother and father. As a novel, the book
would fail. For one thing, the plot would be utterly unbelievable!
But “The Prodigal Father” is billed as an “autobiography,” and
written with loving detail and self-revelation so honest and so deep
that took my breath away. As such, it is utterly compelling and
simultaneously completely credible.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Gendercide and Genocide
Edited by Adam Jones
© 2006
Apart from the rarest exceptions (such as the not-to-be-missed “Female
‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change,” Edited
by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund), edited volumes tend to
be hit-and-miss affairs. It’s hard enough simply to find an
appropriate topic, to accumulate contributions that are varied
enough to provide interest but not so different that they work at
cross-purposes, and to publish the work. Maintaining a razor-like
focus as can easily be done with an individually authored book by
definition becomes almost impossible with an edited volume.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
Archive of All Reviews & Interviews...
by J. Steven Svoboda.
|
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Guest Books |
MILITARY
HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to the
Veterans or Active Duty military in your life on our perpetual
Military Honor Roll page
Go to
Military Honor Roll
FATHERS
HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to your
father (grandfather, great grandfather, etc.) on our perpetual
Fathers Honor Roll page
Go to
Fathers Honor Roll
VISIT
MENSIGHT Magazine
is another free service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc. (MRN).
It has grown out of the response that we have received from articles
posted on
TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official
web-site. The first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)
MENSIGHT
is dedicated to publishing diverse articles for and about men.
We believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned from
the advocates of all the various men's issues.
MENSIGHT
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