Father’s Day is a few short weeks away and no doubt many of you are still seeking out (or hoping to receive) the perfect gift. Fortunately, along has come Home Game, journalist Michael Lewis’s paean to the perils and transcendent joys of fatherhood. Lewis, best-known for his wide-ranging and insightful excursions into the world of investment banking (Liar’s Poker), baseball (Moneyball) and Silicon Valley (The New New Thing) has tackled what might be his toughest subject to date: the struggle of the modern American male to come to grips with what it means to be a good father.

Although it reads fairly seamlessly, Home Game had its genesis as a journal of the Lewis family’s stay in Paris (New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik and family they’re not). It follows its subjects to Berkeley, California (with a brief detour to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where Lewis teaches his girls, then seven and four, how to bet on the ponies, landing them a cameo on OTB television in the process). Much of it appeared in a column Lewis wrote for the online magazine, Slate.

Lewis is married to former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren, whose attitude in these stories ranges from bemused tolerance to utter desperation. Together they’re the parents of two daughters (Quinn and Dixie) and a son (Walker). Before Quinn’s birth, Lewis possessed what might be described as a fairly traditional, if uniquely articulated, view of how he and Tabitha would divide their parenting responsibilities: “She’d do play-by-play; I’d do the color commentary.” Lewis soon learns this retro division of labor won’t survive long in the real world, and he’s quick to document, with honesty and wit, his own stumbling evolution toward a new conception of what being a father means. “This book is a snapshot,” he writes, “of what I assume will one day be looked back upon as a kind of Dark Age of Fatherhood.” He makes us feel as if the path might be more easily negotiable if the job came with an owner’s manual. But perhaps the fact it doesn’t helps the men who will be reading this book identify with his plight and the women who may peek at it in resigned dismay slightly more sympathetic to what their hapless partners are going through.

Lewis’s love for his children is unbridled, though he’s quick to expose their cunning nature, and perhaps here his background as a business writer stands him in good stead. “Small children are ungrateful;” he observes, “to do one a favor is, from the business point of view, about as shrewd as making a subprime mortgage loan.” Although Home Game is a slim book, it boasts hilarious set pieces describing, among a few of Lewis’s parental outings, a Parisian Gymboree session (“You’ve never seen a baby crawl until you have seen it trying to escape a Gymboree parachute descending upon its little head.”) or an overnight camping adventure with Quinn at Oakland, California’s Fairyland (“Quinn and I may not survive, but we won’t be the first to go.”).

The account of Lewis’s vasectomy that concludes the book will leave you alternately wincing and laughing, and it prompts him to offer these rueful reflections describing his new status: “A hero to my wife. A traitor to my sex. A thoroughly modern American guy.”

His family now complete, Lewis wryly concludes with evident relief, “You can only do so much to mess up your kids.” Quinn, Dixie and Walker Lewis are lucky to live with an observant and funny writer, and yes, a loving father like the man revealed on these pages. When they’re old enough to have children of their own they’ll no doubt pick up this book and read it with pleasure. In the meantime, that’s a treat all of us can share.

Copyright 2009 Harrisburg Magazine ( )

By turns amusing and honest, Mr. Lewis gives us a glimpse of his experiences in becoming a father. Along the way he shares feelings that many of us parents have, but hesitate to acknowledge. He also reveals some important truths about how we become parents - precisely by going through those "yucky" moments caring for our children, we develop that elusive bond and bottomless love. Quick read. ( )

Michael Lewis is in between—in between generations, social expectations, and his own family. Fathers used to be the adults you'd see on the weekends or for a few hours at night. They were the ultimate threat: "Just wait until your father gets home!" So how is a modern father supposed to figure out his role in his own house?

Home Game is a frank, funny, and ultimately sweet look at Lewis's adaptation to the birth of his three kids. To some observers, he's the model of an involved father, but to others—like his wife, Tabitha—he's barely treading water. In his own mind, he is basically muddling through. But by the time his third child is born, Lewis has learned some important lessons:

• Home life: If you don't see what the problem is, you are the problem. (p. 78)
• At a school function: If everyone in the room is laughing, and you don't know what they are laughing about, they are laughing about you. (p. 92)
• In the delivery room: Never underestimate your own insignificance. (p. 120)

Beneath the self-deprecating humor, we see the transformation that must take place after each birth. Lewis marvels at the almost instant bond his wife has with their babies. He finds he has to move from a kind of bewilderment to a feeling of inconvenience and finally to self-sacrificing love. And the real lesson Lewis learns is that the more involved he is as a parent, the stronger the bond and less he feels as if he were "doing the dirty work."

On this Father's Day, or any day, pour yourself a beer, turn on a ball game, and dip into this candid collection of linked essays. You probably aren't alone in that wilderness called modern fatherhood. ( )

This was a collection of essays, several of which I had already read online. Gets 4 stars because I still love his writing, and because the topic of new parenthood is fun for me right now. ( )