Review: The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe

I gave this book to my dad a couple of years ago for Christmas, thinking he would enjoy it. (He's never told me if he read it so I don't know if I was right or not.) True to form, that meant I had to read it too. I used to listen to Mike Rowe's podcast, also called The Way I Heard It, and thought that it would be interesting to learn more about the charming, witty, and down-to-Earth host through this combination of podcast vignettes and memoir.

The vignettes are all stories he'd already told on the podcast rather than the new pieces I had hoped for. That's on me but it meant that having heard the podcast, I was already familiar with the bulk of the book. In and among the 35 stories from the podcast, Rowe has dropped short anecdotes from his own life. Readers get to know his parents, see the path he took through show business, from his years at QVC to hosting Dirty Jobs, and stop in at some of his other unconventional life choices along the way, finally culminating in the founding of his mikeroweWORKS foundation. He is a public figure and much of what he shares in the book has been shared elsewhere, on air or online, as well, so there's not a lot of new material here. It is a pleasaant read, filled with self-deprecating humor, a little bit Paul Harvey, a little bit memoir. Readers unfamiliar with the podcast and wanting just little snippets of stories where they can try to guess the subject as the tale goes on will enjoy this book and the way [Rowe] heard it.