Dumbfounded: Big Money. Big Hair.
Big Problems. Or Why Having It All
Isn't for Sissies
by Matt Rothschild

    DUMBFOUNDED by Matt Rothschild
    Category:  Non-Fiction
    Age Recommendation:  Grades 9+
    Release Date:  8/12/08
    Publisher:  Crown
    Reviewed by:  Cat
    Rating:  5 Stars


    So you think being raised by wealthy Jewish grandparents in a Fifth Avenue apartment, twelve years of prep and
    boarding schools, regular trips to FAO Schwartz, chauffeured limousines, or visiting Mom at her husband's Italian
    villa also means a life on easy street?

    Then you haven't read Matt Rothschild's family memoir, DUMBFOUNDED.

    In his memoir, Matt paints a lush and detailed portrait of  life as a complex, awkward outsider in a world that
    demands conformity and simple definition. Despite growing up in a completely different environment, I felt a constant
    sense of familiarity and kinship with Matt, whether he was describing the painful silence that greeted his a capella
    rendition of "Get Happy" for the sixth-grade talent show,  spinning tales of his midget butler, Little Saigon, in the
    hopes of pleasing his fickle grandmother, or confronting an ever-increasing awareness that his sexuality might not fit
    society's definition of "normal."   

    Matt's story runs the gamut of human emotion from laugh-out-loud hilarity to chest-aching heartbreak.
    DUMBFOUNDED is first and foremost a book about people, and it reminds us that once stripped of all our
    ideological constructs (wealth, race, faith, gender, orientation, nationality, etc.), at our core, we're all pretty much the
    same.