HOME GAME

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.