Rating: 
Summary: A Big Man Writing About Little People
Review: After reading a very short, but favorable review in my boyfriend's Maxxim, I had to read this book. After all, who is not facinated by little people, dwarves, midgets, whatever the PC term for people of short stature is today.Unfortunately, this book did not live up to the Maxxim review and I came away a little disappointed. "In the Little World" grew out a piece the author worte for Esquire Magazine about the LPA (Little People of America) convention that takes place every summer. Although it does allow the reader to see what life is like for people shorter than 4'10" (the LPA's definition of a dwarf), it doesn't really do a very good job of making the reader connect with them. In fact, the book portrays them as petty, insecure, and intolerant, rather than the "regular people" that they really are. Perhaps I am missing the point of the book. Perhaps the author was trying to point out that most "dwarf literature" takes the "Big Heart Little Body" approach, and that he was not going to do that. Perhaps his intent was to show that dwarfs can be just as petty, annoying, jealous, and intolerant as every other person. I don't know... Not the best book I've ever read, but not a wasted read either.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Man Writing About Little People
Review: After reading a very short, but favorable review in my boyfriend's Maxxim, I had to read this book. After all, who is not facinated by little people, dwarves, midgets, whatever the PC term for people of short stature is today. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to the Maxxim review and I came away a little disappointed. "In the Little World" grew out a piece the author worte for Esquire Magazine about the LPA (Little People of America) convention that takes place every summer. Although it does allow the reader to see what life is like for people shorter than 4'10" (the LPA's definition of a dwarf), it doesn't really do a very good job of making the reader connect with them. In fact, the book portrays them as petty, insecure, and intolerant, rather than the "regular people" that they really are. Perhaps I am missing the point of the book. Perhaps the author was trying to point out that most "dwarf literature" takes the "Big Heart Little Body" approach, and that he was not going to do that. Perhaps his intent was to show that dwarfs can be just as petty, annoying, jealous, and intolerant as every other person. I don't know... Not the best book I've ever read, but not a wasted read either.
Rating: 
Summary: My world isn't "little" at all.....
Review: Although I thought Mr. Richardson hit on some valid and extremely emotional points throughout the book, I'm concerned as to why he chose to prefice the title "In the Little World.." I am a woman with dwarfism and do not like to be labeled "a dwarf", as I'm sure many others don't like be labeled "a Black", "a Jew", etc. My world isn't little at all - it's filled with big dreams, goals for the future, hobbies, needs, a hearty appetite for life,etc. As I read some of the other reviews, I am also "normal" and I challenge anyone to define what "normal" is in this day and age. Remember, We're all one family on earth and the more we seperate each other due to race, height, sex, whatever, this pushes us all back 50 years. I just wished that Mr. Richardson had hit on this point further. Labels not only form barriers, they segregate.
Rating:
Summary: Gets Under the Skin
Review: At first glance, Mr. Richardson's book seems an interesting, if somewhat superficial tale of "A Reporter's Experience With . . . "--this time, with the world of dwarfs or Little People. He begins his book at a LPA convention in Atlanta, and the first chapters are flavored by his distance, his objectivity. The book takes an abrupt turn as the relationships between Mr. Richardson and a number of dwarfs deepen. It is hard to say whether Mr. Richardson ever truly becomes friends with his new acquaintances, but he is afforded, as it were, a private tour of their personal lives. The reader is introduced to surgical complications, family issues, ambition, feelings of inferiority, anger, love. This, the reader thinks, is real. This is comprehensible. This is what we all understand, and if Mr. Richardson were willing to leave the story there--a rehearsal of family and individual struggles--In the Little World would still be a good book but not as good as it is. Mr. Richardson refuses to accept what he calls, negatively, the "big hearts in little bodies" concept, the idea that dwarfs are no different from anyone else, that an average-height person like myself (albeit at 5'2") should be on the same wavelength, should understand what a dwarf goes through, that everyone is alike under the skin. This is not a false idea. In many ways, it is probably even truer than we imagine. I often saw myself in the events being described, the emotions being expressed, but however much I read or experience, I will never know what it is like to be a dwarf. This is something that I, for one, feel guilty about: I don't know and--if truth were told--I'm glad I don't know. I don't feel pity and unlike Mr. Richardson, I don't believe I've ever felt revulsion towards dwarfs, but I am glad that I have a reasonably healthy, reasonably average body that the world/community I live in reasonably accommodates. This thankfulness feels like betrayal: one shouldn't care about such things or think about such things. One should think that it doesn't matter: that height and weight and clear skin and disabilities are peripheral to the greater matters of personality and soul. And in many ways, this is true. Unfortunately--because of genetic hardwiring or because of environmental pressures or just because human beings are fearful and often not terribly good--it isn't always the way day-to-day life plays out. These difficult issues are the ones Mr. Richardson deals with in In the Little World. He reaches no satisfactory conclusions, but he is unrelenting, sometimes harsh, both with his acquaintances and with himself. It is not always easy to approve of Mr. Richardson, but it is always easy to understand his struggle. In many ways, the book is more about Mr. Richardson than about dwarfs. The tight focus does give a skewed vision of the LPA conference and consequently the Little People community. This is in no way a book about the diversity within that community. But it is an honest book about an outsider's experience. Recommendation: Buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting Book
Review: Good, interesting blend of personal experience and historical/ sociological information. Fast reading, informative and moving.
Rating:
Summary: A very raw, intriguing, and dramatic story...
Review: I am a person of normal stature, however, I am also only 5ft tall. :) Aside from height, there are many ways in which any reader would be able to relate to the author as well as his subjects. Richardson's research about the history and word origin of dwarfs & little people make the book even more enjoyable, focusing only on the eyebrow-raising tidbits of information while foregoing the usual boring background stuff. What starts off as a thorough account of his participation in the Little People of America convention becomes a book of how intertwined his life became to learn about what it means to be different. His honesty and willingness to share the behind-the-scenes conversations and fights made for a very raw, intriguing, and dramatic story.
Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet documentary
Review: I could not put this book down. I read it from cover to cover and went back continuously to re-read certain parts. This book is so truthful and so stirring in its very truthfulness. I have never known a dwarf, but have come to believe that they need a greater strength just to get through each day than the rest of us "normal-sized" people. So many of them have such pain to deal with -- I can't imagine. And yet, they are just people like the rest of us. A truly amazing work. Unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: who is this book about?
Review: I do find it fascinating that Mr. Richardson spends much of this book describing his own cognitive struggle with the concept of dwarfism - the historical information he shares about cosmetic beauty, the activism by individuals with disabilities, etc., is pretty interesting. But Mr. Richardson is really approaching this with half a loaf here - for example, one does not have to be an investigative reporter or a therapist to realize that the sum of his relationship with Andrea is that she has an incredible crush on him. Yet while he acknowledges his confusion about this "friendship" he is seemingly clueless about this issue - even when his wife points out that Andrea's demand for him to go into "therapy" with her is strange, he doesn't have an insightful moment of realizing what is going on here. His detailed description of the situation with Jocelyn and her family is heart breaking, and echoes other similarly written accounts of how a child's disability and dependencies takes it toll on marriages and families. But by the end, we really are less empathic for the parties involved, and more stunned by the blinders they all have on....
By focussing on some of the dysfunction here, though, I think he does a disservice to individuals living with dwarfism. We are left looking at the problems, the dysfunction, rather than the function. There is no question that this is well written, and Mr. Richardson puts himself front and center in the book - examining his own values as if they were a microcosm of all of us "talls". But by limiting his "stories", I think he does these folks a disservice. For example, why not tell the story of a dwarf and family who HAS decided to have limb lengthening surgery - to look at the other side of the coin? I'm not saying that the book must be comprehensive, but it's such an interesting subject - I feel shortchanged...
Rating:
Summary: Best read this year.
Review: I recently read where someone compared the book "Choke" by Chuck Palahniuck as the answer/bookend to his own "Fight Club." But it isn't, "In the Little World" is. It is a small (pun intended) but parallel universe where the occupants fight everyday crisis based on identity and personal worth based on an unfair social judgement system. A system that the author John Richardson investigates endlessly/obsessively even to find out how and when our personal image hardwiring started. John Richardson takes us on a journey unveiling a world most of us have ever experinced but are incredibly interested in. Given only small hints in the media (The Howard Stern show)that Dwarfs lead normal lives like we "normals" do, full of dysfunction, real emotions and intellect this book will make you think twice about staring or not staring at some one with disabilities that are what society consider disfiguring or ugly. By the end of the book you will feel like you have read something revolutionary and likewise feel revolutionary. More humananity,shame,and dignity than one book deserves. I read the book in one setting, it almost seemed like fiction, fast and exciting. Like others surely will, they will fall in love with "Andrea" and hope for "Andrea's" e-mail address so they too can share in her communications and vast wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: Different Subject Matter + Great Introspection = Great Read
Review: 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.
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