The title is very descriptive -- what adventures Herbie Cohen had! He grew up with Larry King and went on to lead workshops and write a best-selling book on Negotiations. You can tell how much Rich Cohen admires his father in this book and I really liked that at the end he realized he left out his mother's story so added it too. There are a lot of amusing anecdotes about growing up and some of the embarrassing situations when his father took on a persona to go to Rich's schools to get him out of trouble or deal with grades. This was a quick read and was an interesting story about family. I had also read an earlier book by the author called "Sweet and Low: A Family Story" which is much more bittersweet and this part of his family history is also mentioned in this book. If you are looking for a quick read about a really interesting man told from his admiring son I recommend this!

Loved it...a great fast read written with love about a real character who will always be relevant
Herbie Cohen the author's dad was already a legend...great to meet the man behind the legend
This is also the story of a late 20th century Jewish family like so many with a break out success Dad eccentric relatives and the joys and challenges of growing up around them

Rich Cohen does it again! His books are consistently enjoyable and this one, a book about his colorful father, is no exception. I'm a sucker for stories about growing up in New York City, especially in the early 20th Century, but Herbie's tale doesn't end there. It's just getting started. I loved Cohen's last book, "Pee-Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent" (Thanks to FSG and Netgalley for that one, too), which was about his relationship with his son, so it's great to read about Cohen's Dad. It's a warts and all portrait, but a loving one. I recommend it highly.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. Last year I read a fantastic book by the author about the last pirate of New York, and he comes back with another interesting character in Herbie Cohen, a man born on the streets of Brooklyn of modest means to become a man who has a legendary career as a negotiator, starting with an insurance company and eventually consulting two different American Presidents and happens to be the author’s father. Herbie has a great family which we meet (Although he can’t stand his father-in-law, who created and distributes Sweet’N Low) and one of his childhood friends grows up to be Larry King, but it’s the wit and wisdom that Herbie displays throughout his life that are what makes the book so memorable.

I picked up the latest by a favorite author, Rich Cohen, with some trepidation. Here is a sentimental biography by Cohen of his dad, Herbie Cohen - surely this is a recipe for love-blind devotion, the adoration of a father by a son, rather than compelling read.

I shouldn't have worried - at all. First, Cohen's dad is an incredibly colorful character with truly fascinating lifetime of stories to tell. Second, while author Cohen's love for his dad permeates (almost) every page, he sees him with pretty clear eyes. His dad's brilliance, his headstrong nature, his triumphant contrarian traits - all of this comes through. But so does a recognition that his father does a certain amount of self-mythologizing, and has a degree of narcissism that was not entirely benevolent in its impact on Cohen and his family. He also finds the time to give sensitive recognition to his mom, and others in the extended family. Readers of Cohen's fantastic Sweet And Low: A Family Story, will welcome back his mom's feuding family - dysfunctional is too kind a word.

This is a breezy, sweet, thoughtful, emotional book - far from the hagiography I feared. This is the fourth book Cohen has written about his family, and he and they continue to be his most reliable, fascinating subjects.

Just tremendous. The fascinating biography of Herb Cohen, the master of negotiation, by his son, author Rich Cohen. Marvelously readable and not just the story of his father but the story of his family,starting in Brooklynin the thirties and forties to the present in the suburbs of Chicago. Cohen displays an ape or ours depth of feeling and understanding of what made his family tick which makes this exploration and excavation of what makes him tick even ,oremintersti g. Funny, fast paced and well,written - treat yourself to this one