I don't know if anyone remembers this book, which burst upon the scene in 1982 and instantly made its authors the current talk of the airwaves. It became a many-week bestseller, and one of them (I'm not sure which), proceeded to make the rounds of the talk shows, where he came off as intelligent, articulate, and funny, poked fun at his own book, and showed that the book really wasn't meant to be taken seriously in the first place. The scathing and well-written review by my fellow Top 50 reviewer E.A. Solinas notwithstanding, this shows they completely missed the point of the whole book. The book is a total satire, and pokes fun at the then raging battle between the sexes back in the 70s and 80s, when the traditional male role was under constant attack by feminists individually and the media collectively, and formerly secure, macho men who had never questioned their roles or behavior before were coping with a newly found insecurity and looking for a new definition of homegrown, American beefcake and maleness. That quest continues today in more subdued form (and with less existential angst), but whatever the ultimate fate of feminism, there's no doubt that it had a telling effect on many American men who examined their traditional roles for the first time. (Perhaps it could be said they finally realized they had delusions of gender). :-) This little book now stands as one of the funnier outposts along the ages old warpath in the battle between the sexes, especially in how that debate took shape and was framed in the U.S. during its earlier years.
