How Tall Are You - The Pros and Cons of Exceptional Height by Don Doxsie
Don Doxsie, former award-winning sportswriter and columnist, has written a very entertaining book about his interactions with people about “different aspects of extreme height”. Don himself was “only” 6’5”, as he jokingly puts it in the first chapter of the book, when he went on a spring break trip to Florida.
Don also writes about his encounter with attendees of a “little people’s convention” in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As you may have gathered, the comments and questions were rather predictable.
Along the way Don references other authors like Ralph Keyes or Arianne Cohen whose book is also listed in this section. You can say that Don covers every angle of the topic of being (too) tall. This comes as no surprise as this book has been in the making for decades.
I found "How Tall Are You - The Pros and Cons of Exceptional Height" to be highly entertaining, well researched and always on topic. Since I am well familiar with the subject, I appreciate Don Doxsie's work immensely. It's especially fun to read the names of women who are friends of this website, namely the owners of Amalli Talli, Simply Tall and Talltique. I must say I'm glad that Don found it important to dedicate a whole Chapter (Chapter 6, for this matter) to the question "What Am I Supposed to Wear?"
I will let Don explain his motivation for writing this book:
"I have been studying the plight of being very tall nearly as long as I have been tall, dating all the way back to my growth spurt of 1970, 1971 and 1972. As far back as 1978, I was penning letters to various people asking their opinions about different aspects of extreme height and reading every book and magazine article I could find on the topic.
Through the decades, there were many times when I set aside my research for a long time (sometimes years) only to come back to it again at some point. Fortunately, I'm a highly accomplished pack rat. I kept everything.
Upon retiring late in 2021 after nearly a half century in the newspaper business, I found the time to pull together all those collected pieces with a great deal of new research and formulate it into something that hopefully is coherent, insightful and perhaps even profound.
I'm not alone in my fascination with this subject. Many others have been scrutinizing the plight of the tall for a very long time and this book would not be what it is without the trails that they blazed..."
Let me finish this review by recommending this book. I have been richly entertained (which is a tall order, no pun intended) and found myself chuckling more than once.