Bestselling Author Adam Mansbach Talks New ‘Go the F to College’ Book w/ Rich

Adam Mansbach wrote a 400-word book about bedtime and accidentally ended up turning down Meryl Streep.

Mansbach, author of the smash parenting book "Go the F to Sleep," stopped by The Rich Eisen Show to talk about his latest entry in the franchise, "Go the F to College." The timing landed personally for Rich, who mentioned his 17-year-old is headed off to college after next year's senior year and that somebody once sent the original book to him and his wife Susie during those sleepless early parenting years.

The origin story of "Go the F to Sleep" is exactly as chaotic as the book itself. Mansbach was putting his 2-year-old daughter to bed, sometimes spending two hours in the room reading what he called "incredibly boring books full of animals and like everybody goes to sleep." The honest parental monologue running through his head was something different. "It just occurred to me one day," he told Rich, "what would it be like to inject the real honest parental monologue into that book? My personal monologue involves a lot of swearing." He is from Boston. Chris on the show immediately felt seen.

The book blew up before it even existed. Mansbach gave a reading in April at a Philadelphia museum to about 200 people. The book wasn't supposed to publish until October. By the end of the week it was number one on Amazon, a PDF circulating in hundreds of thousands of inboxes. He admitted they were "dumb enough to think this was a problem."

Then Audible came calling. They asked who he wanted to read the audiobook. Mansbach thought about it for one second: Samuel L. Jackson. "The bard of the F-bomb," as he put it. They went to Jackson on a Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, it was done. "The book is like 400 words," Mansbach noted. "Many of them repeated more than once. It doesn't take that long."

The franchise only got stranger from there. Bryan Cranston narrated the follow-up about feeding kids. "I had this one crazy moment," Mansbach said, "where I was like, 'No, not Meryl Streep. Get Meryl Streep off the list.'" He paused on that call and asked himself what his life had become.

Larry David narrated "F Now There Are Two of You," the book about having a second child. David issued a statement upon signing on: "I did this book as a favor to Adam, who I don't know and have never met." Mansbach earned David's deeper respect by declining to fly from Martha's Vineyard to supervise the recording session in LA. "I think that's when Larry was like, 'I like this guy.'"

For "Go the F to College," the narrator is Ted Danson. Mansbach, lifelong Bostonian, grew up watching Cheers the way other kids watched cartoons. He described hearing Danson's voice in his head the moment he was writing the book. A mutual friend, W. Kamau Bell, made the introduction, and Danson was in. He even offered a reading of the book's thesis: "When I started reading it," Danson said, "I thought this was for parents to give their kids at graduation. But in reading it and performing it, I realized it's also, and maybe more so, for kids to give their parents, because you're fine, but they're going through a lot of big emotions right now."

The book itself, Rich read a passage aloud on air: "I don't know where the time went. Just yesterday you were a pup. Back then you wouldn't go to sleep. Now you won't wake the F up." The advice inside is less abstract than the earlier books. Mansbach confirmed the best line is a page that reads, "No pills, no powders, do not black out. These things are not good for your health. And if anybody tells you different, tell that a-hole to go f himself." He called it poetic. He's not wrong.

Rich closed the segment by announcing that Mansbach was using the show as a platform to debut his next book: "The Red Sox Pay Your Effing Superstar." Mansbach confirmed the original working title was "Where the F is Mookie?" and delivered a eulogy for his Red Sox fandom that may have been the most relatable thing said on the show all week.