Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned by Alan Alda Paperback Book

Details

Rent Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

Author: Alan Alda

Narrator: Alan Alda

Format: Abridged-CD, Paperback

Publisher: Random House

Published: Sep 2005

Genre: Biography & Autobiography - General

Retail Price: $27.50

Discs: 4

Synopsis

Alan Alda's autobiography travels a path less taken. Instead of a sensationalist, name-dropping page-turner, Alda writes about his life as a memory play, an exercise in recollecting his childhood, his parents (dad Robert was a veteran on stage, film, and vaudeville), and his career. You want to know about Alda's most famous work, the eleven years on M*A*S*H? You have exactly 16 pages to do so, and guess what: IIt's one of the least entertaining parts of the book. But should fans of the award-winning actor-writer-director avoid this slim memoir? Not in the slightest. Slyly humorous and open-hearted, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is a breezy, most enjoyable read. Alda's ability to recall his childhood (including backstage at raunchy vaudeville shows), school years, stage struggles and successes is as entertaining as one of his Emmy-winning teleplays. Alda is inordinately attune recalling life's crystallizing moments: when religion no longer worked for him, how something in his pocket made him forever a better actor, or his mother's painful descent into dementia. Alda's ever present humor is a great asset whether telling a charming love story on meeting his wife Arlene or a life-threatening illness in a remote part of Chile ('I am in and out of consciences, but I never take a break from the screaming. The show must go on.'). Like Alda's persona, his book is more human and less flash. What would be filler in most books is often the mot entertaining and revealing here; especially Alda's dynamic relationship with his parents. Really, who else would name his memoir after an unfortunate trip to the taxidermist? The year the book was published during a revival for the 69-year-old; he was nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony in the same year. --Doug Thomas

View descriptions at Amazon.com

Recommended

Dreams from my father
by Barack Obama

Includes the senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention! In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black...

Teacher Man: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Angela's Ashes describes his coming of age as a teacher, storyteller, and...

Team of Rivals: The...
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

An analysis of Abraham Lincoln's political talents identifies the character strengths and abilities that enabled his successful election, in an...

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt

Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood,' writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. 'Worse yet is the miserable...

Kitchen Confidential:...
by Anthony Bourdain

In this tough, candid memoir, Anthony Bourdain, who has been a chef at several well-known restaurants, takes the reader backstage to reveal the...

Born on a Blue Day:...
by Daniel Tammet

Daniel sees numbers as shapes, colours and textures and can perform extraordinary maths in his head. He can also learn to speak a language fluently...

Truman
by David McCullough

Available for the first time on CD, this Pulitzer-Prize winning work chronicles the life and times of the thirty-third President of the United States,...

I Thought My Father Was...
by Paul Auster

A collection of 180 personal, true-life accounts from NPR’s National Story Project reflects the work of men and women of all ages, backgrounds,...

Garlic and Sapphires
by Ruth Reichl

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a...

Reviews