This was an extremely disappointing book for me. I’ve read some of Glenn’s research work and subscribed to his channel and wanted to know more about his work and how he made his way from the South Side of Chicago to an eminent thinker with independent and well-supported ideas about highly polarized topics. While the beginning was interesting, it devolved (for me) into yet another addiction and recovery book. I only made it to 67% of the book — while I admire many of Glenn’s ideas, he has never been a concise writer or speaker and this book just went on and on for pages about his addiction to crack and his — really pretty astonishing — levels of womanizing (not to mention three children out of wedlock before he turned 20).

I stopped reading at the point where he appeared to be turning his life around and finding religion. I know that a lot of people love memoirs like this but they do nothing for me. I did like his insights near the beginning — watching how people behaved, trying to understand their motivations, and how that motivated some of his research. I also enjoyed reading about his childhood and the way he developed (precociously in all areas). But pretty quickly there seemed to be fewer insights, fewer interesting theories (or at least, less information on them), and more lurid details of a life that I really didn’t want to know about. This book did not change the way I thought about his ideas, but I definitely have zero interest in getting to know him as a person (I’m sure he has very little interest in getting to know me either, to be fair!).