12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Family Tale

by Mark Jacobson, Rae Jacobson

Release Date: June, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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The Scared Straight Tour

I liked the idea of this book -- take your kids around the world and reconnect as a family, while opening everyone's eyes to the world around them. I liked the book, but not for the reasons I expected to.

The Jacobson parents decide to take the three kids on a round-the-world trip for three months when the kids are in their teens. The kids resist, but end up going. The family does seem stronger afterwards.

The trip consisted of places the parents had visited in the past, when they were seriously counterculture humanities students. Lots of third world, poverty-stricken, overpopulated cities. I can't say how much the kids got out of places like that, but it certainly made them stick close together for safety. And they were really glad to get back home.

The best parts of 12,000 Miles were the chapters written by the daughter, Rae. Even though she was going through some rough times as a teenager in New York, she still seemed more together than her father. And I'll bet twenty years from now, she doesn't drag her kids through filth-infested streets trying to save them from the horrors of television.

So did the ".... on TV " win !

A book with an interesting title and tantalizing sleeve notes which does not deliver what it promises. I read a book about a fawning dad and his family, indeed it was mostly about the Jacobson family and a borough of New York with the rest of the world filling in time. Jacobson writes with a likeable style but has little to say when its not to do with his family or New York. There is no feeling for these places they visit. Paul Bowles would have called the Jacobsons tourists and not travellers.
And two corrections 1) Buddha (Lord Buddha) did have a wife and a child whom he abandoned in his search for nirvana. 2) The Cheops pyramid at Gizeh dates back to 3000-2501 B.C.