Yogi Berra’s dad, an immigrant from northern Italy, didn’t see the point of American sports, but taught Yogi to keep his word and always be on time. Mario Cuomo’s father seemed diminutive (“Maybe he was five foot six if his heels were not worn”), but he once led Mario and his brother in a herculean, nearly impossible effort to hoist and replant a downed 40-foot-tall blue spruce. C. Everett Koop’s dad imparted to his son the crucial difference between buying something and affording something. And from her famous father, Danny, Marlo Thomas learned the wisdom of forgiveness when he told her, “I do not hunch my back with yesterday.” For My Dad and Me , Larry King asked more than 120 celebrated and successful people about their favorite memories of their fathers. Their recollections are rich with life lessons, large and small: Some are truly insightful and wise, some are hilarious, some are pragmatic, but each is a genuine reflection of the priceless gift of fatherhood. It’s one thing, after all, to be told about such virtues as honesty and integrity, hard work and perseverance, gentleness and strength. It’s quite another to see them living, or even sometimes faltering, within someone you love. As warm and funny, reassuring and surprising as dads themselves, My Dad and Me not only celebrates fatherhood but also offers some candid glimpses behind the public images of well-known men and women from Donald Trump and President George H.W. Bush to Patricia Heaton and Bill Gates. Larry King presents a moving and revealing collection of inspirational stories about fathers—and the life lessons they teach—from a host of famous men and women, including: Chinua Achebe, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Helen Gurley Brown, President George H. W. Bush, Bob Costas, Alan Dershowitz, Phyllis Diller, Hugh Downs, Bill Gates, Ira Glass, Derek Jeter, Randy Johnson, Don Mattingly, Kevin Nealon, Kurt Russell, Bob Saget, Ryan Seacrest, Marlo Thomas, Alex Trebek, Donald Trump, Al Yankovic, And many more . . . Talk-show host King's name is the calling card here; without it, this book would not attract a great deal of attention. On the other hand, if he weren't who he is, he wouldn't know all these people, from whom he has gathered pithy comments, ranging in length from a paragraph to a few pages, about the importance of fathers. "I have personally asked famous and successful people from all walks of life to share with us, in their own words, memories, lessons, and tidbits of advice from their fathers." The remembrances/tributes are arranged alphabetically, from Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe ("The relationship between my father and his old uncle was instructive to me. There was something deep and mystical about it") to comic Al Yankovic ("[My father] never measured success by material possessions or power"). That alphabetical range also indicates the range of occupations of the individuals from whom King has elicited responses. He means for this little book to be inspirational, and it is, for few readers would really want to argue against his introductory statement: "A father provides us with some of the most important life lessons of all." Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Larry King is the host of CNN’s Larry King Live , the first worldwide phone-in television talk show and the network’s highest-rated program. The Emmy-winning King has been dubbed “the most remarkable talk-show host on TV ever” ( TV Guide ) and “master of the mike” ( Time ). King also founded the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, which has raised millions of dollars and provided lifesaving cardiac procedures for nearly sixty needy children and adults. He recently established a $1 million journalism scholarship at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Chinua Achebe A prolific novelist, an editor, and an educator, Chinua Achebe has won countless awards for his vital contributions to African and English literature. His novel Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10 million copies all over the world and is considered by many one of the hundred greatest novels ever written. He is currently a professor of languages and literature at Bard College. My father was born in the 1880s when English missionaries were first arriving among his Igbo people. He was an early convert and a good student, and by 1904 was deemed to have received enough education to be employed as a teacher and an evangelist in the Anglican Mission. The missionaries’ rhetoric of change and newness resonated so deeply with my father that he called his first son Frank Okwuofu (New Word). The world had been tough on my father. His mother had died in her second childbirth, and his father, Achebe, a refugee from a bitter civil war in his original hometown, did not long survive his wife. My father therefore was not raised by his parents (neither of whom he remembered) but by his maternal uncle, Udoh.