Jordan Ritter Conn

I understand why a lot of readers of this book liked as much as they did. Several have mentioned that it reads like a novel. It does have a flow to its narrative that is much like fictional work, and I do not mean that in any negative sense, despite it being, at least nominally non-fiction. My short capsule review of this book is that it is written by someone who apparently knows little or nothing about a lot of things and has written it for people who know little or nothing about a lot of things. The author apparently specializes in expounding on stories with a sports event at its core, and, in this case, he was looking for a translator for dealing with foreign athletes when a contact was made with one of two brothers. Next to nothing about sports is mentioned in the book, however. Two brothers who are both lawyers are at the heart of the story. Neither does much to convince me they think like any lawyer I have ever known, including not knowing how to approach legal matters in America. The book is mostly about family and traditions, and about making a living like pretty much everybody else in the world. Pretty early on in the book, I noted passages that were wrong enough that I started wondering if the person that provided the author with the "facts" of the story had misremembered (or lied), or if the author had misunderstood what he had been told. If it had been the latter, why had the author -- and anyone reviewing the book before publication -- not verified the information. Early on, it was a very minor matter...about cooking onions. It was just wrong. Not a typo. Just wrong. On the other hand, in a narrative that can easily be argued as being the most dramatic of the book, there is so much wrong about the details of it, that it is a huge misrepresentation, going well beyond mere hyperbole. Luckily, the very barest of facts -- people took a trip -- is true, keeping me from calling it all a lie. Would the book even have been made if one of the brothers hadn't had celebrities praise him for things that had nothing to do with sports or the law or even being an immigrant to America, but for remembering what two relatives had taught him about how to do things that millions of other relatives teach their family members across the world, i.e., how to prepare a home-cooked meal. Like I was taught. And which I, also, have earned money doing for others. Ah, feel free to just mark me down as a bitter little man who wants an embellished narrative written about me, too. Or not. Most folks will not care about what I cared about. I hope they read it and enjoy it as others have.… (mer)