This very funny take on fatherhood by Mr. Eddy should have a place of honour on every new parent's bookshelf-right alongside whichever overly earnest new authority is the current guru on childrearing.Dead-on in its insights into parenting and family life,it's the perfect antidote to the notion that marriage and babies is the end to life as we know it.

Housebroken is a book about parenting for people who aren't interested in books about parenting. Finally, a witty, playful AND philosophical take on the biggest decision of your life, by one of the funniest authors of our day.

Eddie's new book is a fresh break from the slightly bitter, bleary eyed assessments of this ancient art: You don't get any sleep? You don't say! Instead of whining about scraping applesauce off the walls for 10 pages, Housebroken explores new ground with the kind of details you've always want to know, especially for lads: Is it possible to still be cool as a Dad? What happens to your mojo? Your sex life? What REALLY changes? What do you actually need to know to be a Dad?

It's all here in Housebroken for the anxious Dad-to-be. Think About A Boy meets Bukowski and you're getting warm. Eddie's transition from Cad to Dad is the story for every man who is taking the leap or even just thinking about it. That mysterious gap between the single life and fatherhood is traversed with enough insight and original humor to give the nervous newcomer a very clear idea of what to expect.

Still, it's not a dude book exclusively. For all those girls out there wondering about that tormented clown expression on your man's face whenever the subject of children comes up ' read this!

Whether you're a parent in waiting, just flirting with the idea or sure you're not going to breed, Housebroken is a hilarious and inspiring read, the first of it's kind on the topic of domestic Dads.

Start with one part humorous self-criticism, add two rounds of the battle of the sexes, season with sleeplessness, stir-in references to unsuccessful careers and the writing process, baste with challenging child care, season with memorable one-liners and smooth writing, wrap in love, and cover with household chores and frustrations. That's the recipe for Housebroken, a survival manual for any man who's about to become a stay-at-home in-charge-of-it-all Dad of a little one and humorous relief for Moms everywhere.

Mr. Eddie's writing and perspective remind me very much of Erma Bombek and her descriptions of how your children drive you crazy. The main differences are that Mr. Eddie is a better writer and uses fewer one-liners. The ones he does use are priceless though: "Dressing small children is not as easy as you might think. First buy an octopus and a string bag . . . ."

Here are the chapter titles:

1. A Square Peg

2. "She's Perfect"

3. A Cad's Fear of Kids

4. "I'm a Househusband."

5. The Advent of Nicholas

6. Our Horrible Honeymoon

7. The Hong Kong Handover

8. The Politics of Drudgery

9. How to Cook

10. Towards a Possible Redefinition of Machismo

11. "What Do You Do All Day?"

12. How to Dad

The book recounts how Mr. Eddie transitioned from being adrift in his own urban world of freelance writing, messy digs and chasing available women to fathering a son, marrying, and becoming the primary care-giver for that child in the suburbs while his "perfect" wife returned to her high-paying career in television news. In the process, he steals a few moments to nap and reflect (and occasionally to write). All writers will love and appreciate his fascination with old, cheap typewriters (so there's always one nearby where he can peck out notes for a writing idea no matter where he is in the house). He's certainly not Super Dad . . . more like Improving, Loving Dad.

Although the book is played primarily for laughs, it switches somewhere midway through into a mostly reflective book on sexual roles and the love and care that a Father is capable of providing for his children. The reflection part played well with me because I've had several friends who have operated as single, stay-at-home fathers. Interestingly, each of them is a writer and has an outstanding sense of humor. I felt like deja vu as I read this fine book, from that perspective. Mr. Eddie's reflections exactly matched those of my friends.

Does being a writer create your destiny as a father? I hope not. The only male writer I knew when I was growing up was a hopeless alcoholic who passed out soon after finishing his writing quota for the day. His family walked around quietly until the next morning lest he be roused in an angry mood. But then again, Mr. Eddie does suggest that liquor makes the whole process more bearable. Hmmm. There's drink for reflection . . . er, I mean, food for thought.

The book made me delighted that my hard-working wife put me in charge of the outdoors while she does the heavy lifting indoors and with our wonderful teenage daughter. They're both napping now while I'm writing.

After you finish having fun with Housebroken, think about where your ideas of what Moms and Dads do is getting in the way of you and your children having a better relationship. Then, change what you do accordingly (after warning all involved so they don't think you're starting a new mid-life crisis). That's the ultimate reward from this book. Enjoy your parenting!

From the very first page to the last, this story is filled with mystery, romance, laughter, tears, childhood memories and murder! A book you can't put down, and a time that you wish you could go back to, if even for a little while! The author not only puts together a story of two young boys in a small Ohio town in the 60's who are living every kid's hopes, dreams and fears, but relays a message on the dignity, respect and fair treatment all people should receive! We can all but hope for a sequel to this fine first novel very soon!

From the first sentence until the last, this book takes you back to the nostalgic time in your childhood when that first day of summer was the door opening up into a whole new world of exciting adventure, an experience never to be repeated but always to be remembered and cherished. It is a book I literally could not put down. The story was compelling and the characters were very well defined and made you care enough that you felt what they felt and were drawn into the story through their experiences in this book. It is a mystery with just the right touch of playfulfness, yet this book touched on some very serious subject matter, and it respected the weighty subjects of racial issues and substance abuse in just the right way-not taking it too lightly, but not allowing the story to get too bogged down by it. This was a wonderfully compelling book. It made me laugh, cry, think wistfully back upon my childhood, and come away feeling good and being thankful for the experience of reliving my youth and that wonderful feeling of anticipation of a whole new world of adventure we felt as children entering into a summer that held mystery and adventure.

David Mittler is my Uncle. I read this book for the first time about 9 years ago. It was not edited or anything. I was only 11 then. He waited 9 years to publish this as his first novel. I reccomend this book to anyone that lives in or near Elyria, OH. And in case you are just a fan of mystery books, this one takes the cake. We just had a party last night and he gave each member of the family an autographed copy. I can't wait to read it again!

I met Samuel Chand after he spoke at a conference in Los Angeles, and bought his book right off the table. My wife and I had been struggling to plant a church in South Central Los Angeles, and at the time were stinging from several painful setbacks... could we have done anything to avert those disasters? 20-20 hindsight always accuses "Yes!". Chand's book helped us deal with our failure, pick up the pieces (those available to pick up at least) and continue on. Best thing about this book: it is not mere cheerleading or positive-thinking, but honest, bold approach to understanding and redeeming failure so that "all things [really do] work for the good of those who are called according to His purpose". Don't read it when things are going well. Read it when you are angry, despairing, or ready to give up.

The Story Behind the Book

It was the first Monday in August 1985. Mondays can either be real good or real bad for pastors depending on the day before Monday-Sunday! Sunday is the day the self-worth and even the calling of the pastor are tested to its limits. An experienced pastor has counseled wisely, "Never resign on a Monday!" On this particular Monday, I walked up to a few pastor friends who were gathered in the parking lot of the Conference center. The annual denominational conference was about to begin. The typical Monday morning pastor's conversation was in full bloom. "So, how many did you have in church yesterday?" was the operating question. Now, we all know that that question is usually asked by pastors who had a "good" Sunday, and this is the way they can let others know how well they did. Actually, it is a very self-serving question. It is not about the questioned; it is about the questioner! The respondent, who usually had a "bad" Sunday responds by shuffling his feet, clearing his throat, and saying something like, "We've had a lot of sickness in our area and seems like so many people were out on vacation. . ." This one-upmanship in the parking lot that Monday morning got the best of me. So, as a junior member of the clergy, I timidly asked, "Do any of you have low Sundays? Do you ever get discouraged? Do you ever feel like giving up? Do you ever wonder if it's worth it?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I had said the wrong thing! Why deal with reality when denial serves us so well? The book in your hands was born on that Monday morning in that parking lot. The accounts in the book finally answer the questions that were asked in the parking lot and remind us that failure is the womb of success. As you read this book, you will laugh and you will weep. You will shake your head in agreement as well as amazement. Failure is not a popular subject. Go to your nearest bookstore and look for the shelf marked FAILURE; that shelf does not exist! Everyone wants to talk about success (it sells), but we all know we fail at more things than we succeed at. So let's talk about it! This book will get you started.

Samuel R. Chand Coordinator and collaborator of this book

These novellas require readerly effort and patience. In what at first seems like a bit of a patchwork they tell a sort of blinding truth, in the tradition of Hasidic folk tales. God is not only a presence, but a character. In a mirror of the human mind, an assortment of worlds - places, times, emotional and mental states - somehow coexist. There are important yet homely recognizable details plucked from bourgeois prewar European life, but no quaintness in the descriptions of the characters' histories in Europe (mainly Germany, Hungary, Austria, Rumania) and then Palestine and Israel. For example, the protagonist segues quite reasonably from a consideration of an ice cream cone to the burden of his father's mental illness - in several paragraphs. Love among people (parents and children; men and women) is often a troublesome thing. "Women, Joseph thinks, yearn to embrace a man, and a man yearns to embrace his Creator [...]"

Patience is required, and rewarded. The presence of the several languages (German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic and the English of the translation) is the tip of the iceberg, really, in these stories that attempt so much. Definitely worth reading.

This book contains two novellas - each excellent and unlike each other.

The Book of Joseph is written in a mix of poetry and prose. It follows, to varying degrees of detail, the lives of several individuals who lead intersecting lives. Don't consider this "just another Holocaust novel" - it is a significant and unique addition to the corpus of Jewish Holocaust literature.

Katschen is a very low key novella following the life of an orphan in Palestine - describing life through the very imaginative child's point of view. Katschen's view is a delightful mix of naivete, taking words literally, and a vivid visual imagination. His life is followed through care by an aunt, by an elderly uncle, thru a kibbutz, a friendly Arab, the police and finally by his father - a man confined to an insane asylum through most of the story.

Both tales include footnotes that translate the bits of German, Yiddish, Hebrew and Arabic that occasionally occur. This multilingual facet is the only trace of a scholarly background on the part of the author.

Yoel Hoffman is an author with absolutely stunning control over his story - an unerring sense of concrete detail in sparse prose. I have yet to find any of his work less than awe inspiring.

If I were a woman in a Toronto bar, I'd stay far enough away from David Henry to be safe but keep close enough to fix a keen eye on him! To witness his escapades and get the added benefit of seeing the world through his twisted yet endearing outlook is a soul-soaring treat. The book gets a 10 on the laugh scale. (It was my husband's guffaws at reading the book that sparked my interest in the first place.) Everything from girlfriend "Kim, Gloria, or whatever" to the "Get it On" store are gifts of hilarity I hope reappear in subsequent novels by David Eddie. Encore, encore!

You may not identify with David Henry, the quixotic protagonist of this novel, but you can certainly sympathize with him. The narrative is filled with such wit and down-on-your-luck wisdom that you hope his trials will continue indefinitely.

This book is simply hilarious. David Henry is no hero. In fact, he's probably one of the most flawed characters I've ever come across in any of the books I've read. Jobless, up to his eyeballs in debt, without a girlfriend and an all-out immature child of an adult -- he's fascinating and gets himself into situations that are so funny that I've had tears in my eyes. Take a character like that and put him on a quest to land a real job and find true love and you get "Chump Change".

Eddie Cantor is truly a great comedian! The two new autobiographies that were just released; you hear Eddie's story about how he got in to show business, his sucess's and also failures. This is a wonderful book and I would advise it to any Cantor fan.

Eddie Cantor was a larger-than-life musical comedian in the first half of the twentieth century who made a splash on Broadway and in the Goldwyn Musicals of the 1930's. If you want to hear about old-time showbiz straight from the mouth of someone who lived it, seasoned with intimate memoirs, you've got to check these books out. What's more, you get two for the price of one!

I was tired of waiting for the next Lemony Snickett book for my boys and bought this. It's truly a disappointment. The humor isn't very good, the plot is boring in fact my children never asked me to keep on reading as they do with their other favorites. Save your $$ and buy something else.

Let me first say, that as I read Mr. Ardagh's work, I couldn't help but think that he was the British version of Lemony Snicket-similar topic and writing style, complete with asides explaining the origins of certain words and phrases.
Even the pencil illustrations by David Roberts look like the drawings in the Snicket book.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

In the preface of A House Called Awful End it is explained that the story came about as a series of letters written to cheer up Mr. Ardagh's nephew Ben while away at boarding school.

Eddie Dickens, 11 years old, has a mom and dad with a strange illness that makes them go yellow and all crinkly around the edges and smell like hot water bottles. Until they are well, he is sent to live with his mad uncle Jack and mad Aunt Maud (who, by chance, carries around a stuffed stoat). Eddie travels to an inn where Uncle Jack pays the people w/ dried fish, meets some traveling theatre people and eventually ends up being sent to an orphanage, which he leads in liberation.

This book is rather an enjoyable read. Fans of Lemony Snicket will love it

My dyslexic son bought this book and the sequel while we were in
Oxford, England and we absolutely loved them. We could readily picture all of the characters and the things they were involved in. My son was 11 at the time and loved having it read to him every night. We have just purchased our first Lemony Snicket book as we grew tired of waiting for the final book in this trilogy. Perhaps we found it so entertaining as I am an upper elementary teacher and his father a middle school teacher and we know these characters on a personal level. It is well worth exploring. I have also read it to my students and they beg for more.

If you're a =VH= fan, you should have already known over 90 percents of the facts/trivia in this book. Dave's nickname? Eddie's married to whom? Producer's name? The author also made dozens of useless questions & answers from each of Van Halen CD inserts. If you really want to know more about Van Halen, buy The Van Halen Encyclopedia (C. J. Chilvers) and Crazy From the Heat (David Lee Roth). Dave's book (highly recommended!) is out of print, but you'll definitely find one from auction/Amazon marketplace seller.

This book would make a perfect gift for the Van Halen-obsessed. It contains a mind-boggling amount of research, and if you care about little details like what the Edge, U2's guitarist, said about the US presidency in relation to Van Halen, or how much guacomoli was made available backstage after a VH concert, this is the book for you. It's certainly more thorough than most trivia books. Even major VH fans will find that the book stops just short of telling them more than they ever wanted to know. If you add it to your VH collection, you'll probably find that it's the single greatest source of facts on VH out there.

If your a real VH fan you will buy this book!

This is one of the hardest reviews I've written because I honestly wasn't sure when I finished this book if half of what I had just read was true or said merely for revenge. While the story of Eddie Fisher's career is interesting there is so much malicious gossip that it detracts from the basic story.
Starting as a talented child and then through a very up and down career Mr. Fisher never had any doubts about his abilities professionally. Through his version of his marriages to Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, Connie Stevens and so forth we get all the dirt that we ever wanted to hear and then some. While I like a good "Hollywood" biography as much as the next person I've never read one that gave me so many details on people that I really didn't WANT to hear. Sometimes petty, sometimes shocking and frequently doubtful there's a lot of stuff in this book that really could and should have been left unsaid. A strong proponent of freedom of speech I also believe that much of what Mr. Fisher had to say was simply unkind and people who have since died like Montgomery Clift and Roddy McDowell are no longer able to defend themselves and to deny what is printed about themselves.

Although he never had any doubts about his singing ability Mr. Fisher is also quite self-effacing about his shortcomings as a husband, father and speaks openly about his addictions. What is probably the best aspect of the book is when the reader realizes how much Eddie Fisher has learned along his journey.

I wish him peace but I wish he didn't have to be so just plain mean in this version of his life.

This was an interesting enough book. I felt like Eddie Fisher didn't really become sleezy until after Elizabeth Taylor dumped him. They say if you see a really screwed up guy, a girl/woman did it. Well, there you go. Of course, I'm no authority on Eddie Fisher. He was before my time. I knew him as Carrie Fisher's father. I felt sorry for Debbie Reynolds and how he runs her down in the book. Since she is the mother of his children, it wasn't very classy of him.

If you want to read a good gossipy Hollywood book, read this. Ann Margret, Bing Crosby, no one is spared.

First, I couldn't put the book down. It was a fascinating read. One thing I have to correct here and that is Eddie's opinion that he was bigger than Elvis. Eddie - NOBODY except God is bigger than Elvis. Eddie Fisher, according to what he reveals in his memoir, was his own worst enemy. Yes, he bedded many beautiful and famous women, but the business decisions he made were atrocious! Ye gads! this man never learned his lesson! His drug addiction was his downfall and of course, his marriage to Liz Taylor didn't help either. But, I do understand how he felt about Liz. When you fall hopelessly in love with someone and they end up cutting your heart out, you are never quite the same again. I didn't realize Debbie Reynolds was so devious. He does tell why they broke up - she was too prim and proper and needed to loosen up a bit. However, if he had stayed with her he might not have had such a sad life. Who knows. The one thing that you will get out of this book is that lots of women loved Eddie and Eddie loved Eddie too.