Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball” and “Liar’s Poker,” has taken quite a bit of heat for his latest book, a memoir titled “Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood.”

Janet Maslin of the NY Times ripped him a new one. Bob Minzesheimer, of the typically milquetoast USA Today, actually asked some pithy questions in this Q&A. You likely can read other reviews by Googling “Home Game” and Lewis’s name.

The truth is: the book really isn’t that bad. I read it over the course of a few mornings on shushing duty with L. Like his other books, the prose is light and moves quickly. Also like his other books, it is clear from the moment you crack the spine that you are reading the musings of a self-obsessed narcissist who takes himself way too seriously.

Controversy has stemmed from Lewis’s assertion that while “maternal love may be instinctive,” paternal love is “learned behavior.”

If he had taken the time and energy to look into the anthropology behind this statement—made the effort to tell us how in other primate species, fathers are absent all together—I might have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and at least entertained his argument. But the lack of any science behind his argument, coupled with a hearty dose of cynicism about kids in general, made me want to gag. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, he lost me at hello.

This said, Lewis touches on a number of concepts that definitely resonated.

My first post on this site remarked about early fatherhood as a series of monotonous chores. Lewis definitely experienced that too (which, quite frankly, made me feel a little better about three loads of laundry a day). When he discussed the art of balancing work with different facets of childcare—something I started doing two weeks after L was born—I listened.

The bottom line from my perspective is that any new book that discusses a different approach to fatherhood is worth considering. Not a wholehearted endorsement, but a thumbs up nevertheless.