The Best Seat in the House: How I Woke Up One Tuesday and Was Paralyzed for Life

Rucker--baby boomer, husband, father of two, self-described "aging hack"--had a life that was certainly good enough. Then, at the age of 50 he was struck out of nowhere by a rare condition called transverse myelitis, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. This remarkable book speaks to the fragility of life and resilience of an ordinary human being.

One Tuesday afternoon Allen Rucker, Hollywood comedy writer and family man, wakes from a nap to find himself paralyzed from the waist down. Shocking? Yes. Unfair? Absolutely. Reality? Inescapably. Rucker is shaken up and angry, but soon realizes he's stuck in a wheelchair forever. He begins to reevaluate everything in his life, from the simplest bodily functions to the mysteries of the universe. Luckily, he's invited us along on the bumpy, poignant, and often hilarious road to recovery that leads him to completely redefine his life.

The Best Seat in the House is Rucker's unpretentious, unapologetic, refreshingly comic, and powerfully heartfelt paean to life and its fragility, and to the resilience and adaptability of a single, normal, very funny human being.