Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men [Hardcover]

This book is possibly one of the most important for men (and women) in the last 50 years of the so-called gender debate. As one of the world's leading psychologists, Baumeister takes an open and inquiring approach into many of the myths and poses the question "are there alternate explanations here?" and in doing so, debunks almost every feminist 'anti-male' myth.

However, this is not a book which is anti-female, if anything, it cleverly explains that we need both genders, and that we both serve different purposes and roles from a cultural perspective. It also dissects the apparent drive (mainly in the US) demanding that men to be more like women, which thankfully, is also debunked. We do not need men to be more like women, nor women to be more like men.

For example, Baumeister illustrates that men have great interpersonal relationship skills (which is not what the feminists claim), and that men use these in a larger social setting, whereas women have great interpersonal skills and tend to use these in more intimate 1:1 setings. Men are considered as more 'expendable' by society, are not treated equally in the workplace, in risky occupations etc...... some real eye openers in this book.

This will challenge your thinking, and is a welcome fresh perspective. Possibly the first book in the gender space to be unbiased, evidence based, and thought provoking. Highly recommended.

That question is easy to answer: yes! This book is an incisive, extended essay about gender differences and the role the play in our society, with positions that are backed up by a great deal of research, done both by the author and others. It also serves as an essay on the perceptions of gender in our culture, particularly among well-educated people. Until reading this book, I never realized how much misinformation about gender is widely accepted. For instance, the fact that the average male sex drive is stronger than the average female sex drive is obvious to many people (and can be proved, as the author points out), and yet textbooks and scholarly writing on sexuality and gender assert that there is no difference at all (or that women have a stronger sex drive), and this mis-perception is commonly promoted and repeated.

The beautiful thing about this book is that it is, for the most part, remarkably unbiased. As a social scientist, the author knows how to interpret data and describe its implications while avoiding value judgments. He points out where implications are clear-cut but multifaceted, and also points out where there are multiple possible causes or effects. Nonetheless, this is destined to be a controversial book. Some of the points in this book support some out-of-fashion traditional beliefs on gender. Others novel beliefs that are at simply at odds with what educated people are supposed to think. And while the author himself steers away from advocating any specific course of action, it is easy to imagine people reading more into his analyses that is actually there, due the charged nature of the topic. I have many close, well-educated female friends, and I would be reluctant to bring up the information in this book in conversation with most of them -- the topic just seems too sensitive, regardless of how fascinating the information is or how open-minded my female friends claim to be.

Criticisms: Although this book is very unbiased, relative to popular writing on gender, there are a couple cases where the author could have gone even further out of his way to avoid potential claims of bias. Using the word "progress" in the context of culture is always a bit dangerous -- it's uses in this book could have been replaced by a less value-oriented description (although probably at the expense of being much more verbose). Also, the author's notion that cultures "want" things is a bit slippery -- it can have slightly different shades of meaning, some of which would allow the author to embed value judgments, although I did not feel it was abused for that purpose in this book. Some parts of this book were a bit redundant, but the number of insightful comments more than compensated for this fact.

I purchased the Kindle edition. There are a few typographical errors related to missing or extra spaces between letters, which is unfortunate. However, it does have a fully functioning index with links, which was a pleasant surprise.

Dr. Baumeister's book was great and I recommend reading it twice.