Father Knows Less Or: "Can I Cook My Sister?": One Dad's Quest to Answer His Son's Most Baffling Questions

This is the tale of how a New York Times editor set out to answer the peculiarly marvelous questions of his precocious young son and wound up on an unexpected journey of his own.Wendell Jamieson's son, Dean, has always had a penchant for asking unusual questions: "Dad," he'd ask, apropos of nothing, "what would hurt more: getting run over by a car or getting stung by a jellyfish?"; "Dad, why do policemen like donuts?"; "What's it feel like to get stabbed?"; "Does Mona Lisa wear shoes?"; "Can I cook my sister?" Because "Dad" was a newspaperman, he decided to seek out answers and got swept up in the hunt. He spoke to movie directors and ship captains, brain surgeons and stabbing victims, lottery winners and museum curators, politicians, judges, compulsive shoppers, mothers-in-law, magicians, Yoko Ono and a dominatrix, until what began as a lark quickly grew into something larger. Blending a charming father-son journey with the surprising, sometimes hilarious questions and answers it spawned, Father Knows Less offers a heartwarming exploration of the childlike curiosity that lives within us all.