Animals I Want to See

Starred review from April 12, 2024

Seeman has lived in five countries, traveled to more than a 100, earned bachelor's and law degrees from Ivy League schools, and owned and led businesses. In this book, readers learn about his upbringing and the path he took to reach these accomplishments. He describes growing up in a family of 14 in 1960s Toledo, OH. His family lived in a ramshackle house in a multiracial neighborhood, and extended family and neighbors were always willing to lend a hand. Seeman's mother is at the center of this narrative, and he portrays his father as an angry person with a substance-use disorder. In his youth, Seeman kept a running tally of all the wild animals he had seen, with the hope that he would eventually encounter the larger world and what it can offer. The book shows how he accomplished that feat and his resilience. VERDICT This powerful memoir is ultimately about keeping a family together as things begin to fall apart. It's consistently vivid, sometimes humorous, and engaging from start to finish.--Amy Lewontin

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2024
A philanthropist and business leader recounts a youth marked by poverty and other challenges. Seeman grew up in a family of 14 in a housing project in Toledo, Ohio, a shoddy place where his mother stepped into a second-story hallway and nearly fell through to the floor below. It was a place where the bridge over a local roadway offered a useful metaphor: "On one side of it looms prison, despair, hunger of all sorts. On the other, freedom, pleasure, and the untold treasures that come from living a purposeful life." He adds, "Which way will I go? Statistics say I will not choose wisely." Allowing for a few mishaps, though, the author chose well, urged on by a wise football coach who cheered him and his teammates through losses as well as victories and by a teacher who raised difficult topics instead of "the solid kinds of questions that had unequivocal answers." Seeman was aspirational from a young age; his title comes from a bucket list that he kept in school, quite literally enumerating animals that he wanted to see in their natural habitat. Years later, he succeeded in that goal--just in time in some cases, for the tigers he sought out in India have since been wiped out by poachers. So, too, were many of his young friends swept up by that despair and its sequelae--even as the author took every opportunity to gain an education, eventually winning a scholarship to Yale, where he continued his relentless work, "studying at the library until the last possible minute before running to make it on time to the next new experience." His lists and life rules expanded accordingly, including one that guides him today: "Do something kind for a stranger." Inspirational without mawkishness, a satisfying rags-to-riches yarn.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.