Nerd Dads Review: (The Dads’ Book) For The Dad Who’s Best At Everything

(The Dads' Book) For The Dad Who's Best At Everything is, if nothing else, an interesting book. It oscillates, sometimes wildly, between humorous bits and pages of legitimate and earnest advice for both new dads and those of us who have been doing this for a while, but are still constantly entering new and mysterious stages of childhood development.

While the humorous stories and jokes in the book can be genuinely amusing, they can also be rather anachronistic in nature. My wife tells me that it's just me and the company I keep, but I have a hard time believing that there are still many fathers today who actually refuse to change diapers or deal with crying kids, yet the first portion of the book is dedicated to jokes based on just that. In truth, it feels almost as if they were lifted from a Fatherly Advice book from the 50s and dumped in this one without an obvious sense of irony.

Also interesting is the mixture of advice given in the book. It handles a wide variety of topics, with some being genuinely helpful and interesting while others range from flat out random to borderline insane. Is teaching a kid how to make a bow and arrow from scratch really a skill set one should try to develop from a four page spread and a few retro clip-art style illustrations in a book? I'm really not sure.

While I can't claim that The Dad's Book is truly worthy of being on anyone's "must-have" list of child-rearing advice, it's also not a waste of time and space either. For the most part, the useful advice given in the book can be found elsewhere in a more helpful format, and the jokes are generally kind of weak with one of them occasionally bringing about a genuine laugh. In short, it's pretty much the perfect gift book, worth buying for a friend who's expecting their first kid, but not something you should run out to buy for yourself because you need help figuring out how to get your kid to sleep through the night or use the potty on a regular and consistent basis.