Customer Reviews

WAKING UP SCREAMING FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM: NPR's Roving Correspondent Reports from the Bumpy Road to Success

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This is a collection of quirky stories about quirky people that the author happened upon in his work as a journalist. All the stories are loosely tied to the theme of "the road to success." You hear about the people who are planning to get rich by farming earthworms, poetry slams, the last professional human cannonball, selling condoms as key chains, and much, much, more.

Although most of the stories are quite funny, I really felt empathy for some of the people in them. All were just trying to get ahead, using ideas that most of us would consider to be doomed from the beginning. A couple made me feel down-right sad, especially the one about people trying to hit the big time with a cure for cancer. Instead of being amused by the investors' arrogance of thinking they had a miracle cure for cancer, I was deeply saddened to read about their desperate, terminally ill patients.

As a whole, however, the stories are quite amusing and entertaining. Reading the table of contents will give you just a small hint of what is to be found in this book.

This is a book you read for the writing. I deeply admire Bob Garfield's talent, and not just because we share an alma mater!

In fact, the subjects of these sometimes brief, sometimes extended, profiles made me want to stop reading at times. Garfield interviews some pathetic, mentally ill, delusional, hopeless and even criminal people. I didn't find reading about them laugh-out-loud funny. In fact, some people are horrifying, such as the mad-inventor duo in Mexico with the cancer "treatment." Others, like the inventor of the Speakeasy phone receiver cover, are amusing, but ultimately sad as well.

In his introduction, the writer celebrates the tireless effort and boundless optimism of his subjects. Yet they don't inspire me to make a grab for the American dream. Rather,they make me want to retreat into a nice, stable, 9-to-5 job. Maybe that's the ultimate message of this book.