Practical, perennial direction for the modern man.
Sage guidance that aims to help men finesse the nuances of the opposite sex.
In a nonfiction work intended to “help men understand women better,” 50-year-old former Playboy photographer Gomez (Socially Smart, 2013, etc.) draws from four decades of pictorial work as well as his own experience fathering four daughters. After declaring that men can often be ruled by their “trouser snake,” he follows that insight by saying that many women can be unpredictable and difficult to understand. Gomez believes it takes a great deal of patience for men to treat women fairly and respectfully. His book’s sections target a variety of issues: intimacy, trust, dating, digital distractions, the do’s and don’ts of breaking up, and the significance of doing the “little things” for your romantic partner. He begins by stressing the importance of interpersonal communication, both verbal (as in respectful dialogue) and nonverbal (including body language and personal appearance). Advice on the timeless power of proper etiquette, hygiene, sartorial appropriateness, patience, and chivalry may be common knowledge to some readers, but Gomez insists that 21st-century men must sharpen these skill sets. Less impressive, however, is a chapter on identity, which gets mired in detail, and Gomez’s penchant for stating the obvious (“If you are married or in a long-term relationship, you might suggest showering together, but don’t ask her this on the first date”) and the derivative (“Remember to laugh with her, not at her”). However, a chapter on what he calls the “curses” of women’s lives, including societal standards of beauty, the process of aging, and menstruation, may resonate with male readers. Although Gomez successfully demonstrates his talent as a savvy raconteur, he also aims to be a socially responsible one, hoping to help reduce the “blatant sexism” that he believes is prevalent in contemporary society. This informative guidebook’s wealth of information belies its farcical title and entertainingly demonstrates that “there is much more than snake skills to being a real man and a gentleman.”
Practical, perennial direction for the modern man.Pub Date: June 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5123-8319-5
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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