Philip Lerman is a middle-aged Bronx-native jewish "hippie", who co-produced the long-running fugitive series "America's Most Wanted". This subjective memoir is written proof that he is a big soft-hearted weak-willed lug of a guy. He loves his kid to near worship levels of emotional exxageration, and he seems to think that these sappy emotional anecdotes would be interesting to anybody other than his own immeidate family.

Lerman's story is told from the perspective of an older father. Stories of jacking it into a cup and test tubes are interrupted with factoids about the Ed Sullivan show and The Monkees. This is all perfectly fine... until I hit upon factoids that I not only don't care about, but that aren't even common enough for a 28 year old father to understand. It would be like me writing a book fifty years from now and mentioning that the lead singer to Five Young Cannibals was also the inventor of hypercolor shirts (not really true, by the way).

The literary style of Dadditude can only be described as corny Dad humor; the title itself is indicative of his overly-self-important goofball humor throughout the book. It actually reminded me of my own dopey Dad, in a way. Except that this Dad is a descendant of actual vaudville performers. This I can totally understand. Poor Mr. Lerman even opens himself up for critical ridicule when he describes his step-daughter as someone who doesn't think he is funny or interesting. I got to give it to him for being honest and being a fun older dad, but I certainly don't think the content warrants anything more than a few blog entries.

The subtitle to Dadditude is "How a Real Man Became a Real Dad". Men become Dads when their wives push out an infant. It should have been sub-titled "How an Middle-Aged TV Producer With Good Intentions Learned How To Parent The Wrong Way". In other words, this book is not recommended as a parenting manual. He and his wife give up their marital bed to share with their son Max for the first two years of the kid's life, he completely caves in when his toddler insists on keeping the pacifier, and he seems to let his son eat all kinds of candy and fast food. These are all honest mistakes that any of us have made, but they aren't very indicative that the author is a trusted source for fatherhood advice.

I was hoping that Dadditude would be told from his perspective as an at-home father. In fact, the book jacket describes him as a "full-time father", but only in the sense that all fathers are "full-time". One of his anecdotes refers to a time when Max is two years old, and mother has left them alone for the first time. He places so much emotional importance on this anecdote, and yet it literally consists of him dropping Max off at daycare, picking Max up from daycare, and then dropping Max off with the babysitter.

I'm not impressed.