Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit Book

If you watched Andy Rooney's end of show remarks on "60 Minutes" you probably have a pretty good idea of what this volume is like. If you never saw Rooney--and, sadly, there is an ever-growing number of people who have not--you might enjoy dipping into this collection of his musings. There is an Introduction by his son Brian which gives us a new and unique perspective on Andy Rooney the father, and a timeline of his career. I never knew what a woodworking enthusiast Rooney was, nor that his love of football could be traced to is own college playing career. I didn't know that he used to write for Garry Moore, and I certainly didn't know that, more than once, he resigned from good jobs as a matter of principle.

Rooney's early career is documented here largely through his own writing; what he did in college, how he met his wife, and his fascinating military career in World War II writing for STARS AND STRIPES. Essays from later in his career are just as entertaining as ever. "You see but you do not observe," Sherlock Holmes famously told Watson. Rooney observed what most of us only see, and his sharper eye was the starting point for analysis and insight that made his writing both entertaining and enlightening. His essay on Chairs is an outstanding example of how a commonplace everyday object can be the subject of original and eye-opening thinking, and remembrances of things like a trip to the dump can make the reader nostalgic for an America he himself may or may not remember.

Rooney was very opinionated, and no reader is likely to agree with everything he wrote; but noting those differences and trying to decide why we disagree can be just as much fun as those moments when we read one of his comments and say "Of course!"