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H. Jackson Brown Jr., Best-Selling Giver of Fatherly Advice, Dies at 81
His “Life’s Little Instruction Book,” which counseled “take someone bowling” and “believe in love at first sight,” has sold over seven million copies.
H. Jackson Brown Jr., who embodied the uprightness, competence and sentimentality of the all-American dad in his self-help blockbuster, “Life’s Little Instruction Book,” died on Nov. 30 at his home in Nashville. He was 81.
The death was confirmed by his son, Adam, who did not specify the cause.
Mr. Brown’s book consisted of 511 homespun commands, characteristically beginning with phrases like “Resist the temptation” and “Show respect.” They covered business (No. 34: “At meetings, resist turning around to see who has just arrived late”); conversation (No. 22: “Learn three clean jokes”); etiquette (No. 89: “Don’t let anyone ever see you tipsy”); love and friendship (No. 225: “When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go”); the duties of the paterfamilias (No. 254: “Learn to show cheerfulness, even when you don’t feel like it”); and the pleasures of wholesome activities (No. 144: “Take someone bowling”).
From the summer of 1991, the year “Life’s Little Instruction Book” was published, to the summer of 1994, it ruled The New York Times’s “advice, how-to and miscellaneous” best-seller list. For a while it was No. 1 in paperback and hardcover simultaneously.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee published a knock-off of Mr. Brown’s conceit in a 1998 book anticipating his campaign to be the next Republican presidential nominee. The same year, Attorney General Dan Lungren of California paraphrased Mr. Brown in a slogan while running for governor. Ross Perot exhibited a copy of the Brown book among other prized possessions at his corporate headquarters. And the slim book of advice as a genre became a publishing phenomenon, with titles like “Kitchen Wisdoms: A Collection of Savory Quotations” and “Doctor’s Little Book of Wisdom.”
Probably nobody copied Mr. Brown more than Mr. Brown himself. He wrote two sequels and 17 other “Life’s Little” books, including “Life’s Little Instruction Book for Incurable Romantics” and “Life’s Little Treasure Book of Christmas Memories.” There were mugs, tear-off calendars, screen savers and fortune cookies. By 1997, the original volume had sold about seven million copies, Publisher’s Weekly reported. It was translated into 33 languages.
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