Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Harper Collins
Manufacturer: Harper Collins
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 272
Printing Date: November 30, 2001
Publishing house: Harper Collins
Sale Popularity Level: 2895805
Studio: Harper Collins
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Product Description:
Dr. Kopits takes me into an examining room and leans against the stainless steel bench and asks me what I'm writing about this time. When I tell him what I saw in Australia, he immediately starts to nod. 'This is a great subject,' he says. Then he stops, as if caught by the subject himself.
I wait.
After a moment, he continues. 'What you are looking into is the abyss. This takes you to the very heart of a human being, to the deepest aspect of the soul.
He gives me one of his solemn looks. 'Because the thing is, you have to confront yourself.'
(from In the Little World)
In 1997, almost by accident, John H. Richardson found himself sharing a hotel with more than a thousand dwarfs. Over the course of a single week, he witnessed love and anger, fear and bravery, arrogance and humility, even a bizarre romantic deception -- the entire spectrum of human emotion in one concentrated dose. But at the end of the week, he discovered that leaving the 'Little World' wasn't as simple as checking out of a hotel. In fact, his journey would last a full two years.
At a time when bigger often seems synonymous with better, and physical beauty serves as currency, the world of dwarfs usually passes beneath our notice. Now, in this groundbreaking work, awardwinning author John H. Richardson brings the Little World into focus.
He introduces us to characters like a saintly but obsessed doctor and a mother who sacrifices her family to save her dwarf daughter. He follows two dwarf lovers from very first meeting through the struggle to overcome their fear and shame and find the confidence to love each other. He becomes personally involved in a tangled and often confrontational friendship with a female dwarf. Through these stories and musings ranging from classic theories of beauty to the history of the disability movement to postmodern theories of difference, Richardson presents a world that is a skewed reflection of our own -- and offers us a glimpse into the essential human condition.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Here's a good criteria for judging this book. Substitute the word "dwarf" or "little person" with African American, Jew, Latino, etc., and you will find this book offensive. The author never gets past the physical differences from himself, and we never get a true picture of the humanity of his subjects. I also happen to know some of the subjects of his book, and he completely distorts their stories, and actual events, for the sake of a good read. Consider it a work of fiction.
Rated by buyers -
John Richardson allegedly went to Atlanta to write about the yearly national conference for Little People of America. What he actually ended up doing was putting himself into the story very much like Charlie Kaufman did in the film "Adaptation." It didn't work for that film and it certainly doesn't work for this book.
So many reviews praise Richardson for sharing this hidden world with the general public. Richardson does not shed light on an unknown world. He reports on a world full of people that he, like many others, fail to see as human beings. He exposes his prejudice towards people with dwarfism throughout, but the most glaring example is at the end. After following Jocelyn and her family for over 2 years he says good-bye and writes that he "bends down to kiss her bulging forehead." Two years and the only thing he still sees are the differences? With reporting such as this he never is able to convey anything to his readers besides his constant "look at the freaks" mentality that the book opens with. Richardson's glee at his entry into dwarf-world simply reads as the kid who finally finds someone the bullies dislike even more than they dislike him and uses his new found knowledge to keep it that way.
Perhaps it's more important for Richardson to blow away the stereotype of "little bodies/big hearts" and let the world know he's the Goliath that slew David. Perhaps his "us vs them" mentality makes him feel superior. Perhaps he has never come to grips that the beauty that he is so obsessed with has eluded him. Whatever his reasons for writing this book, gaining insight on a community he is not a member of is not one of them. There are better fiction books on dwarfism than this supposedly true story.
Rated by buyers 
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I loved reading this book and will read it again. When I began reading, I could not set the book down. I felt Richardson was honest and respectful of difference. He speaks his mind over a subject he initially knew very little about. It was one person's perspective and he told it with compassion. As someone who also has a disability, I gravitated toward each and every page; to each and every person.
I was totally involved, so much so that I started rereading my own texts to often dispute what he wrote. Whether I agreed or disagreed with his assessments is not the point. He's a journalist and told it like it is according to his perspective. Does that mean I have to agree with everything he wrote? Of course not.
Yet I was introduced to a world I would not have been, had I not read his account; conversations which involved both the dwarfs and himself. I was so moved by this book and felt it one of the few books I've read in awhile that created an emotional turmoil with myself.
The only thing I questioned (and this is not about his or other's opinons) was that perhaps Eveyln and her daughter Jocelyn were like a book on their own. It was just something I wondered.
I thank all the incredibly brave, honest and candid people profusely. You brought me a new sense about life and love. We are just people.
Rated by buyers -
I saw this book in Half-Price Books. I liked the layout on the cover, it looked "different", and it was cheap (bingo!), so I bought it. Because of time constraints, it took me 2-3 weeks to read this book. However, one could easily finish it within a week if they so desired.
I really liked the book. The author went to a convention of dwarves for a magazine assignment, and initiated relationships that would continue for a long time. One was with Evelyn Powell and her daughter Jocelyn. From Australia, it details their communication and friendship as they return home, go back to America for surgery that will help her to walk, return home again and decide that they are going to return permanently to America, leaving their family behind. In Evelyn you saw both a mother willing to do anything to help her daughter, as well a super-mother who was sometimes overly focused on this quest. You get to know her feelings, as well as those of her other children and her husband, who feel that she abandons them.
You become acquainted with Andrea, another dwarf. She has a love-hate relationship with the author because she's not willing to accept his opinions that dwarves initally strike him as weird. Different. Fascinating. I thought he was being a good reporter, and being honest. It would have been easy to patronize them, and write a touchy-feely big-hearts-in-little-bodies sing-song tribute to the hard lives of dwarves. But I felt that the author really told it as it is. By being intimate about his own response to seeing a little person, he was able to analyze and dissect the reasons why we see people as normal/varying from the norm. I felt that he was brave to be so honest about his thoughts, especially because he got a lot of flak for them. Listen, if you don't want the truth, which is many times ugly, there are a lot of other books you can pick up. I'm not so sure that they will touch you as much as this one did.
Richardson both highlighted the unique lives of dwarves and drew attention to their advantages/disadvantages that come from being short. He also showed, in many times heartbreaking ways, their humanness. Their insecurity. The scrambling that goes on at these conventions to find a romantic partner- because this is a limited opportunity to hook up with someone your own height. The hierarchy within the dwarf community, paralleling that within our own society. I ultimately finished the book feeling drawn closer to humanity, realizing what it is that connects me to humanity, including dwarves, and feeling that I had a glimpse into a group of people that before was unknown to me.
I don't claim to be an expert on the dwarf community after reading this book- without firsthand experience, I will never know what it is like to see life from a lower view. I do feel that this book connected me to a people with passions, frustrations, loves, and hates often the same as my own.
Rated by buyers 
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Journalist John H. Richardson attended a Little People of America convention looking for a story he could turn into a book. But the perfect story did not emerge immediately and so Richardson, cynical journalist that he seems to be, apparently decided to force a story. What emerges is more a voyeuristic look into the methods and musings of a journalist than the intimate look at "dwarfs" that Richardson may have intended.
Early in the book, the author muses over how he should approach his story. He is critical of those who write "little people with big hearts" stories and sets out to do something different. He succeeds. This book comes off as little people through the eyes of a little heart.
Richardson chronicles his involvement with a brassy female dwarf ; the blossoming love of a dwarf couple ; and a crippled teen female dwarf who suffers through multiple surgeries with her maladjusted mother. The author takes the subjects on his own terms, works his way into their lives, and gains their trust so that he can expose their worst personality traits with diminished attention to any warmth that they might possess.
The author writes very well as may be expected from one who writes for a living. His coverage of the world of little people is fairly complete with significant discussions on the medical treatment of dwarfism through surgery and therapy. He delves too deeply into the philosophical view of dwarfism through the ages. And he delves deeply into the relationships between little people, their families, friends and others who surround them.
He graphically chronicles the stress that dwarfism can place on a family and even more graphically portrays the havoc that can occur when one turns outside one's family for moral support.
Most of all, however, Ricahrdson depicts the way in which a journalist can invite himself into another person's life to spin a story in his own direction. Although Richardson documents the hurt expressed by some of those who read his blunt newspaper coverage of the Little People of America convention, he sheds any personal remorse and continues his calloused views to the end of this book. I can only hope that those same people hurt by Richardson's newspaper work will save themselves the pain of reading this book.
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