Frank, honest and understanding.
A straightforward, practical guide for men in heterosexual relationships who’d like to explore sex with other men.
In this slim, accessible book, Benn aims to reach the “typical sexually restless married male.” For him, this man is likely between 40 and 60 years old, and though married for more than 10 years, he secretly longs for man-to-man contact, perhaps including sex. While maybe not quite ready for, or even interested in, leaving his wife and family, he can no longer hide his desires. That’s where Benn steps in. In sympathetic, nonjudgmental prose, he advises readers on how to conduct private relationships with other men, exploring first why certain men may want to stray from their normal path. He’s encouraging and yet realistic, letting men know that while they’re hardly alone in their gay fantasies, acting on these fantasies will likely wreak havoc on their marriages. Nevertheless, the decision is up to them. The book will be particularly useful to those looking for practical advice about how to enter into a gay lifestyle, with chapters on where to meet men—including sex shops, adult cinemas and gay bars—how to react if you encounter a man from your “other life” in one of these locations and how to engage in safe sex. In a time when gay lifestyles are increasingly accepted, the book has a slightly retrograde feel to it. One wonders why Benn didn’t simply write a manual about coming out, as he writes so emphatically about the relief and joy of unearthing the desire. Most likely, it’s due to the fact that Benn appreciates how difficult it can be to turn away from the notion of a traditional marriage. “He doesn’t want to hurt anybody, least of all his wife or children,” Benn writes. There are also other practical concerns, like finances, that may make it even harder to change. To Benn’s credit, he acknowledges that committing adultery is an ethical decision not to be taken lightly.
Frank, honest and understanding.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481099677
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
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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