American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics by Dan Savage
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
For the avid Savage fans out there, this book might be unnecessary. If you’ve read Savage Love religiously, if you’ve read all of his other books, if you’ve followed his work very closely, you may not feel the need to pick this one up. There’s a feeling early on that there isn’t as much “new” stuff here, that these are topics and discussions that Savage has covered before. The subtitle for this book might be “the complete Dan Savage primer.”
And yet, even if you’ve read the entire Dan Savage canon, I still think this one is worth your time. Savage’s writing style is just so crisp, so compulsively readable, that his books are a pleasure to work through, even if the topic is deeply serious.
Of particular interest to me were the chapters about growing up Catholic (I can relate to that) and his experiences when his mother passed away (which, fortunately, I can’t relate to yet), the latter of which prompts some thinking on the death with dignity movement and physician assisted suicide (both of which I support whole-heartedly).
There’s so much more to be enjoyed, however. I love his frank style. I love the practical approach to sexuality. At one point in the book, Savage describes a particular piece as “the kind of discussion you’d have with someone after a few glasses of wine.” I think that’s a perfect description for the book as a whole, as wine-fueled discussions can be serious, deep, silly, opinionated, intense, thoughtful, and everything else one can imagine, but never boring.
Cynical Idealism 