Customer Reviews

No Way Renee: The Second Half of My Notorious Life

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"It's people like this who make you realize how little you've accomplished," said satirist Tom Lehrer.

Dr. Renée Richards (aka Dr. Richard Raskind) is a person who knew everybody, hung out in the same social set with millionaires, sports and movie stars, appeared on national talk shows, ... . So if you're looking for some inside, titillating gossip, her readable book No Way Renée covers that too, but she doesn't overkill the issue. She speaks openly and honestly.

During her adventuresome life, Renée Richards pissed away a small fortune on rescuing her son Nick from his own youthful peccadilloes (a bright young man who certainly inherited his father's [ i.e. Renée] absence of humility), and she also traveled the low-paying professional tennis circuit. In a way, you could say she dug her own holes and then made a career of climbing back out of them. She certainly made the whole idea of transsexualism more acceptable to the public. Since the 70s, the medical community has recanted on sexual reassignment policies, so today transsexuals don't capture the headlines the way they once did. She was most fortunate to have her professional medical career to fall back on.

About 1/3 of her book (also co-written by John Ames) is devoted to recapitulating the first 40 or so years of her life. A new generation has since grown up who have never heard of Dr. Renée Richards. So, to understand Renée Richards more thoroughly, I encourage you also to read her first book, Second Serve.

Along the way, she also became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (no shabby achievement, and a fact not stated in her book). She also established a fine professional reputation and has published first-rate research articles on eye surgery. But for her transsexual distractions, I got the feeling she could have become a great surgeon, not just a damned good one.

Did Renée Richards really want to be the spokeswoman for transsexuals? I think not, but she still faced the challenge squarely. Given the choice, she would rather have been a successful surgeon who also happened to be a genetic female. Yet, as a most intelligent and rational man, in that one facet of gender she was driven purely by her emotions to -- above all -- become a woman.

Herein lies the greater question. Renée Richards clearly foresaw the public and private hazards of switching sexes, yet she was compelled to choose this path at the risk of torpedoing her own family and her career. So I don't think she came any closer to answering the question why? (I've had transsexual patients, and I'll be damned if I can come any closer to answering that big question.)

She never regretted having the surgery, yet, she sighs, she never found contentment either as a man with a "Miss Right" nor a "Mr. Right" as a woman. [ref. Interview "The Lady Regrets" in the February 1st , 2007 New York Times.] Even if you ignore her exterior, I still think you will find Renée Richards a fascinating person to know. Read the book.

Frederick Malmstrom, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist

I grew up with the Renee Richards saga in the background and saw an article on this book in People magazine and decided to purchase it. Dr. Richards writes with honesty, humor and intelligence, and I could not put the book down. She has a very compelling story, and it helped me to understand better what transgendered individuals might go through in our society. It was fascinating to read not only about how she reacted to her ordeal but her family members and colleagues. I think she must be a very courageous person and I thank her for writing this and sharing it.

I really appreciated Dr. Richard's honesty and her willingness to talk about very personal and private matters. I learned a lot from her. It amazed me that after such a difficult life, she is not angry or bitter. I admire that.

I enjoyed the book very much. It gave a very insightful understanding into the life of an interesting and accomplished person. Along with with being good resding it made you laugh.

The book is not so interesting.

She told us, only the things she wants but nothing more.
It' s very politically correct, but the book is not useful to understand the complex life of transgender people, and the real changement of roles, habits, and so on..that was I aspect from a person who lived 40 years as man and 30 as women.

A couple of comments. First, although I enjoyed her first book, "Second Serve" very much, I found this one to be a bloated, overpriced, self-serving and superficial attempt at avoiding any real depth about the major interest people have about her, that she is a transsexual. Famous surgeon, male tennis pro turned female tennis pro, tennis coach, whichever, it's still the frank gender stuff that carries the major interest. Although this was present in her first book, it is mostly absent in this one. This could have been more correctly titled, "No Way Renee: The second and mostly boring half of my notorious life." In addition, given that the author is a noted opthomologist, it would have been thoughtful for her to have enabled the text-to-speech feature in Kindle for those who are either visually impaired or just want to listen on a Kindle while driving or walking.

This autobiography will help you understand the issues transgenders face in our society. This fun book is written openly and honestly.