26 Jan The First Review: “The Single Most Inspiring Book I’ve Ever Read”

Few things take my breath away completely, unexpectedly. This did.

A few weeks ago I participated in a ceremony to ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ. It seems that someone’s stock truly went up that day!

Today, one of the people I met that day posted this beautiful story — the first printed comments about THE COUNCIL OF DADS.

This morning on my flight to San Francisco I read “The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me,” the latest book by Bruce Feiler that comes out this April. This is the first time in my life I have read a book cover to cover in one sitting and I can unequivocally say that Bruce’s book is the single most important and heart-felt and inspiring book I have ever read.

[snip.]

While the descriptions of the Council members and what each wants to share with Bruce’s daughters are poignant, enlightening and thought-provoking, it’s Bruce’s own writing about what it was like to fight the cancer during his “Lost Year” while facing imminent death, all in front of two young daughters, that makes The Council of Dads such an astonishing read.

His treatment included an aggressive chemo regime and a 15-hour surgery right out of a sci fi movie in which doctors removed several bones from his leg and reconstructed it in a titanium-filled procedure only one person has ever survived.

Please be warned that this is not one man’s grasp for attention — “look at me, I survived cancer.” It’s a journey of the mind and body, family and friends, love and sadness, in which the author stays present with his emotions throughout and recounts them with vivid detail.

“As you can see,” Bruce writes, “cancer is not linear. Our lives rock unaccountably – and unpredictably – among moments of hardship, stress, joy, pride, laughter and exhaustion. There is profundity to explore, but also laundry to do.”

Bruce’s ability to mix the profound and awe-inspiring with the mundane makes his book accessible and universally actionable to help you live a more balanced and focused life.

Early in his war against cancer, Bruce writes that cancer “is a passport to intimacy. It’s an invitation – even a mandate – to enter the most vital, frightening, and sensitive human arenas.”

By chronicling in such depth and compassion and pain his own relationship with cancer, Bruce’s book serves a passport to understanding and an invitation for each of us to ask ourselves “Who is my Council of Dads?”

Thanks Bruce for a wonderful book that will help guide my life for many years to come.

To read the entire review by Michael Lazerow, click here.

Thank you, Michael. See you on the bikes!