Can a man with a demanding job really be a good father? All Out is a bracingly honest answer from Emmy and Gemini Award-winning anchorman Kevin Newman and his grown son, Alex.
Confessional and provocative, their memoir is also a touching meditation on ambition, absence and family that will resonate with every parent and child who’ve ever struggled to connect and
understand each other.
Kevin Newman wanted to be a family man in an era when fathers are expected to be more engaged than ever before; he also wanted to reach the top of a profession that demands 24/7 commitment. The
higher he climbed, the more irreconcilable those aspirations seemed. Meanwhile, his artistic, solitary son, Alex, was wrestling with his own competing ambitions: to be the sporty, popular son
his dad wanted, and to be true to himself. Paradoxically, their attempts to live up to expectations--their own, and each other’s--were driving them apart. Then, two parallel identity crises
forced a reckoning. Kevin reached the summit of American network television, becoming co-host of Good Morning America--where he was instructed to develop a ＂quarterback＂ persona and
change his accent, mannerisms, personality, hairstyle and everything else that made him Kevin. At the same time, Alex was realizing he was gay, but frantically trying to mask and change that
fact. Both felt like failures and hungered for one another’s approval, but didn’t know how to bridge their differences. Today, a decade later, they retrace their steps (and missteps) to
reinventing their relationship and becoming one another’s role models for what it means to be a man in our culture. All Out is a moving chronicle of all the ways that fathers and sons
misunderstand and disappoint one another--and a powerful reminder that they can become closer not despite their differences, but because of them.
From the Hardcover edition.
