Please Open in the Event of My Death

AS FEATURED IN TV, PODCASTS AND MAGAZINES: Imagine your plane is going down. Prayer is useless. Fiery death awaits. Now imagine your children. The hours spent feeding, giggling, changing diapers, soothing tantrums, gazing into eyes ... all will fade from their memories until you're just a name. What are the stories – from "unabashedly sentimental" to "exceedingly age inappropriate" – would you want to preserve? What advice would you give them, the hard-earned wisdom to prepare them for life's challenges? Well, Mark Hsu was never in a plane crash, but his crippling fear of being in one led to this book. A litigation partner in New York City, Mark remembers hearing the refrain that having kids meant "your life is over" ... and how he welcomed it. He recalls the night he first met his Italian wife and decided that the Japanese-Chinese guy needed to go for broke and show off his Roman-accented Italian. He describes his lonely, peripatetic youth as an only child of a deep-cover CIA spy. Drawing inspiration from pop culture and sports, Mark offers hilarious and astute advice – not saccharine or blindingly idealistic – for modern life.