Customer Reviews

Man Made: A Memoir

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As a man diagnosed with the same malady as the author, reading about someone who had endured the same misery as myself was both shocking and reassuring. Ken Baker describes his journey in compelling and sometimes painfully honest prose. His description of a descent into a torturous abyss is rivaled only by his ascent from the very depths of despair. Most of my family and closests friends have read this book and have a new found understanding for the hell some of us have endured. Mr. Baker's book is a worthy example of the power of the human spirit.

I really enjoyed this book. On one level Man Made is a psychological and sociological memoir. More importantly however, it's just a plain old good read-- as entertaining as it is thought provoking. In a natural, anecdotal and seemingly effortless style, the author tells the tale of his journey through boyhood and into early adulthood, while simultaneously bringing the reader along on a spiraling tumble into a crisis of health, self-awareness, manhood and humanity. The author shares some valuable and unique insights into gender rolls, manhood in modern America, and the way that we all interact with and view one another, and ourselves, as men and women. A well written, compelling story about what happens when the body becomes one's own worst enemy. Man Made is an all-around good read-- I recommend that anyone pick it up.

A prolactinoma is a pituitary gland tumor that produces excessive amounts of the hormone prolactin. This slow-growing tumor accurs in both men and women and is often not identified as the source of health problems until it has grown to a rather large size. In a male, excessive prolactin has an emasculating and feminizing effect. Testosterone levels decrease, the sex drive all but disappears, and erections are practically impossible to achieve. To make matters worse, when prolactin reaches high enough levels in the blood, it can cause males to lactate.

At least 10 years of Ken Baker's life was spent in the confusing world created by his prolactinoma. He was unable to understand why the rest of the guys around him were so sex-obsessed. He could not figure out why 500 sit-ups a day didn't flatten his stomach even though his fellow hockey players were able to build up their bodies with less dedication. He didn't understand why a young athletic male such as himself could rarely ever achieve an erection. He didn't know why his headaches were getting worse, and he certainly had no clue why he was lactating. But to designate Ken Baker's years living with a prolactinoma in his head as an emasculated hell would not do justice to his profound experience. He has had the rare opportunity of observing the members of his own gender with the mindset of someone somewhere between male and female. He saw us for what we are. The obsession with sex, the never-cry-in-public manliness, the male chauvinism, and other characteristics we as males possess, Ken Baker could not relate to. When finally diagnosed and treated (most importantly, when sex drive and erections returned), he was finally able to understand why so many men possessed the characteristics that he had disdained for so long.

This book several other storylines besides the chief one of the author's struggle to understand his "emasculation." He describes his relationship with his father who he loved very much despite the fact that he was often unsupportive, tempestuous, and even racist. The descriptions of his relationships with his brothers invoke both laughter and sadness.

I recommend this book to anyone who accepts the fallacy that male attitudes, sex drive, and the such are solely under the control of the mind and that males just choose to be what they are. Ken Baker is proof that a little hormone called testosterone has quite a bit more to do with it than you think.

Ken Baker's Man Made is an honest, insightful look at the author's struggle to define himself as a man -- a struggle complicated by an undiagnosed pituitary tumor and made even more interesting by the fact that he was a star athlete living a very "macho" existence. Baker's book has universal themes of identity, sexuality, and self-discovery that he packages in a highly readable, briskly paced and ultimately very poignant memoir. The book raises timely issues about whether it is nature or nurture that makes us behave and think the way we do. How biologically proscribed is manhood, or is it merely a cultural construct?

A must-read that will appeal to anyone who's ever wondered about what makes you "you." .

Many women seem not to recognize that men can go through much of the same sex-related anguish that they themselves must suffer. While we may not be as vulnerable as women, cultural confusion, ignorance, shame and stinging embarassment are all in the mix for most men to whom sex is not always the big joke we make it out to be. It is often a great frustration, even for the well-adjusted. Mr. Baker's story highlights these issues through his own severe case (thank God it's rare) giving hope to anyone who has ever felt like the only one in the world who isn't getting any.

Ken Baker's Man Made takes you into the world of a boy searching for his own manhood in a world that tries to dictate it for him. It is well written. Humor is peppered throughout what was a tormenting experience for the author. It is about a disease but it is not a book about being sick, but rather a book about living and overcoming the obstacles life presents.

I could not put this book down. The writing is superb, the story truly amazing. What an incredible story told so well.