- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (Nov 25 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312376995
- ISBN-13: 978-0312376994
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.7 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #794,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Hilarious and truly bizarre....like a weight-loss manual written by Hunter Thompson or financial planning advice from Charles Bukowski."
--Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad.
"Sam MacDonald is a strong new voice in the field of creative nonfiction. His book tells the compelling story of a man, obsessed with weight loss, haunted by demons, overcoming all obstacles and achieving a significant goal. It is powerful reading in direct and down-to-earth prose." --Lee Gutkind author, ALMOST HUMAN: Making Robots Think
"Raw and brutally honest, Sam McDonald has a way of grabbing you by the throat and demanding that you stay with him on his wild and hilarious romp of self-reinvention. Read this book for the powerful storytelling, read it for the laughs, read it for the privilege of getting to know a charming new voice--read it for the quiet rumble of hope McDonald so masterfully imbeds within these pages." – Jeanne Marie Laskas, author of Growing Girls: The Mother of All Adventures
Product Description
Faced with the truth that his debts and his waistline had both ballooned out of control, Sam MacDonald devised a plan to change his life.
When Sam graduated from Yale in 1995, he watched a classmate make inroads as a head-office guy in professional baseball, another become a day-trading millionaire, and another develop connections at the Playboy Mansion. Struggling to make ends meet, he shrugged his shoulders at their success and raised a tall one to them.
It wasn't until April 2000 that Sam got his wake-up call. He weighed 340 lbs. He was flat broke. And the IRS had caught up with him.
In a desperate attempt to save himself, Sam decided to limit himself to a budget of $8 a week and 800 calories a day. He called it "The Urban Hermit Plan."
He thought he would do it for a month. Instead, he embarked on a bizarre year-long journey. He lost 160 pounds in the process, befriended rent-dodging trailer-park denizens, flew to Bosnia on assignment, traveled to a peace festival in a hippie van, had a run-in with Cooter from the Dukes of Hazzard, and met the woman who would later become his wife.
The Urban Hermit is a wildly hilarious story about backwoods living, as told by a man who should have known better.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.1 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enjoyable & Easy Read, Dec 4 2008
By Paul Kronenberg - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Urban Hermit: A Memoir (Hardcover)
I read The Urban Hermit in a couple of hours and found that Sam MacDonald has a very engaging, honest, funny and captivating style of writing and speaking to the reader. In the introduction, he states that:"I was a big, fat bastard. No excuses. No complaints. That's just the way I was."He was having a good time, drinking, eating and hanging out. Things probably would have continued for another 10 years, had not bills and credit card debt began to get out of hand.From that point, he takes the reader along with him on his journey. I was especially amazed at his ability to stick to a radical change in eating and living, that he devised.Perhaps he didn't have any choice or maybe his inate self-respect made it hard to look for an easy way out. Memoirs often give the opportunity to walk with someone in their shoes. This particular memoir is special because the author is a good guy to hang out with. By the end of the book, I was happy that his hard work had found him with much to be thankful for.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really Enjoyable Read, Dec 15 2008
By nashvillegirl - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Urban Hermit: A Memoir (Hardcover)
The Urban Hermit is a quick, clever, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny book. Sam MacDonald is in his late 20s when the life that he's always enjoyed (drinking, hanging out, not really caring about money) comes to a grinding halt when he discovers how much money he owes to the IRS and credit card companies. He decides to try an "urban hermit" plan for month, where he exists on the cheapest food possible (tuna, eggs and lentils) while saving up money to pay his creditors back. Unlike a lot of other memoirs where the author decides to follow some self-improvement plan for a year, MacDonald originally plans on being an urban hermit for only a month. Due to a series of unforeseen events, he ends up being an urban hermit (with some breaks) for many, many months. During that time, we see him travel to Bosnia for a reporting job, bust a porn shop for illegal viewing booths, save a trailer park, travel to a huge hippie gathering in Montana, get what sounds like his first real girlfriend, and various other adventures. MacDonald's style of writing is perfect for a book like this, and he has a way of describing situations and scenes that will make you laugh out loud. The parts where he is attempting to cook the lentils and traveling to Montana in a VW Bus are particularly funny. If you are from Maryland or the DC area, you will enjoy familiar sights being mentioned in the book.The book around 280 pages, but is a very fast read. MacDonald is a sympathetic, likeable character and his discipline is admirable. One warning - because I know some people don't like this - there is a fair amount of drug use in the book, so if you are squeamish about that, be forewarned. If you don't care, then dive right in!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
required reading, Mar 12 2009
By Book Lover 1955 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Urban Hermit: A Memoir (Hardcover)
The Urban Hermit was totally hilarious and got me through my train ride like no other book. After hitting bottom financially, MacDonald is forced to concoct a crazy idea to save money that consists of him eating only lentils and tuna. This story takes us through those surreal months--once the local bar regular, he starts pitching magazine stories to make the horrible time go by and lands a gig to cover the Rainbow hippie cult and is then flown to report from Bosnia. We meet a slew of equally absurd and hilarious characters in this very entertaining and funny story, including MacDonald's strange cousins and a few randoms. A fascinating insight to a generation that wracked up the worst credit in history. This book is about the extremes one guy went to in order to break those shackles. I can't look at lentils and tuna the same way anymore. I laughed out loud numerous times while reading this and so will you.
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