I picked this book up at the Dollar Tree store for a dollar.

I always thought it would be a great for a father, grandfather, or even a great grandfather to pass his wisdom and experience down to the next generation in written form. For one thing, the information could be stored in print and be readily available when the recipient thought it was valuable or worth his or her time.

That explains my interest in seeing what a nationally known news host would do with this concept.

Hugh Downs certainly loves his great-grandson Alexander.

On air, he always projected that grandfatherly warmth and compassion. Surprisingly, that exact feeling doesn’t transfer as strongly on the printed page.

Very surprisingly, much of the book deals with cold hard scientific facts.

For instance, the beginning of the book deals with physical child development from zygote through full grown baby. This review of child development is not what I would want to read if Hugh were my great-grandfather, nor is it what I would want to read having spent only one dollar on the book.

At only 124 pages, far too much of the book is spent on well-known scientific and political developments.

One part I did like was Hugh’s categorization of people from young adulthood to “ancient.”

Here’s what he said, verbatim:

A young adult is: 21-33
A prime adult is: 34-55
A young middle-ager is 56-65
A prime middle-ager is 66-75
A young old person is 76-88
An old old person is 89-98
And an ancient is 99 and beyond

With this kind of a perspective, I think Hugh may live to be way past 100!

At first I didn’t like his categories—I thought they were way too optimistic and skewed toward old age. The more I thought about it, and as I just now re-read his comments about the categories, I thought maybe he has better perspective than I, being over 80 years old.

I originally wrote this review more focused on the shortcomings of the book. Unfortunately, (or fortunately), I lost that version on my msntv (web-TV) at home, and I now am re-writing and changing this review maybe a week and a half after reading the book, and with more of an appreciation of the book’s positive points.

Hugh says in the book that he hopes to present four things to his grandson:

1) some of his philosophy of life

2) some biographical material, including stuff about other family members

3) speculation about what your world will be like at different stages of your life

4) advice (unasked for, but possibly useful)

Here are a few things I found interesting/worthwhile in his “letter”:

Less than one percent of humans get a college education.

“Time does not seem to pass faster the older you get—it seems to have passed faster. It’s in looking back that it whizzed by so fast.”

“The love of a single individual can have an eternal quality, even after death.”

Based on that last statement, this book just might be worth your time checking out.