• Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

  • And Other Things I've Learned
  • By: Alan Alda
  • Narrated by: Marc Cashman
  • Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (426 ratings)

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Never Have Your Dog Stuffed  By  cover art

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

By: Alan Alda
Narrated by: Marc Cashman
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Publisher's summary

He's one of America's most recognizable and acclaimed actors - a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his 11 years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

"My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was 6," begins Alda's irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda's life, events that would make him what he is, if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist's shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can't be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.

©2005 Alan Alda (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A brief but entertaining autobiography tempered with humility and a depth rarely found in celebrity memoirs." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing!

I was amazed at how good this book was. He is not self-serving as most celebrities are and he actually has quite a bit of insight into things. It grabbed me at the start and kept me interested.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Alan Alda Biography

This book was very different from the comedy I expected. It is primarily the autobiography of Alan Alda and his immediate family. He really opens up to all the good and bad that he went through. I expected to hear a lot about his TV and movie career but that was limited. The book was fascinating until he got to MASH. At that point it got less interesting. Wisely he spent relatively little time on his Hollywood career and lots on his struggles to get there.

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