Gender Books - Page 2

How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It

Patricia Love, Steven Stosny

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Men are right. The “relationship talk” does not help. Dr. Patricia Love’s and
Dr. Steven Stosny’s How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It
reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness:

Love is not about better communication.
It's about connection.

You'll never get a closer relationship
with your man by talking to him like you
talk to one of your girlfriends.

Male emotions are like women's sexuality:
you can't be too direct too quickly.

There are four ways to connect with a man:touch, activity, sex, routines.

Men want closer marriages just as much as women do,but not if they has to act like a woman.

Talking makes women move closer;
it makes men move away.

The secret of the silent male is this:
his wife supplies the meaning in his life.

The stunning truth about love is that talking doesn’t help.

Have you ever had this conversation with your spouse?

Wife: “Honey, we need to talk about us.”
Husband: “Do we have to?”

Drs. Patricia Love and Steven Stosny have studied this all-too-familiar dynamic between men and women and have reached a truly shocking conclusion. Even with the best of intentions, talking about your relationship doesn’t bring you together, and it will eventually drive you apart.

The reason for this is that underneath most couples’ fights, there is a biological difference at work. A woman’s vulnerability to fear and anxiety makes her draw closer, while a man’s subtle sensitivity to shame makes him pull away in response. This is why so many married couples fall into the archetypal roles of nagging wife/stonewalling husband, and why improving a marriage can’t happen through words.

How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It teaches couples how to get closer in ways that don’t require “trying to turn a man into a woman.” Rich in stories of couples who have turned their marriages around, and full of practical advice about the behaviors that make and break marriages, this essential guide will help couples find love beyond words.

The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do

Peg Tyre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the moment they step into the classroom, boys begin to struggle. They get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls; in elementary school, they’re diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often. By eighth grade huge numbers are reading below basic level. And by high school, they’re heavily outnumbered in AP classes and, save for the realm of athletics, show indifference to most extra­curricular activities. Perhaps most alarmingly, boys now account for less than 43 percent of those enrolled in college, and the gap widens every semester!

The imbalance in higher education isn’t just a “boy problem,” though. Boys’ decreasing college attendance is bad news for girls, too, because ad­missions officers seeking balanced student bodies pass over girls in favor of boys. The growing gender imbalance in education portends massive shifts for the next generation: how much they make and whom they marry.

Interviewing hundreds of parents, kids, teachers, and experts, award-winning journalist Peg Tyre drills below the eye-catching statistics to examine how the educational system is failing our sons. She explores the convergence of culprits, from the emphasis on high-stress academics in preschool and kindergarten, when most boys just can’t tolerate sitting still, to the outright banning of recess, from the demands of No Child Left Behind, with its rigid emphasis on test-taking, to the boy-unfriendly modern curriculum with its focus on writing about “feelings” and its purging of “high-action” reading material, from the rise of video gaming and schools’ unease with technology to the lack of male teachers as role models.

But this passionate, clearheaded book isn’t an exercise in finger-pointing. Tyre, the mother of two sons, offers notes from the front lines—the testimony of teachers and other school officials who are trying new techniques to motivate boys to learn again, one classroom at a time. The Trouble with Boys gives parents, educators, and anyone concerned about the state of education a manifesto for change—one we must undertake right away lest school be-come, for millions of boys, unalterably a “girl thing.”

Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage: America's Love Lab Experts Share Their Strategies for Strengthening Your Relationship

John M. Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Joan Declaire

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1994, Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Washingto— made a startling announcement: Through scientific observation and mathematical analysis, they could predict—with more than 90 percent accuracy—whether a marriage would succeed or fail. The only thing they did not yet know was how to turn a failing marriage into a successful one, so Gottman teamed up with his clinical psychologist wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, to develop intervention methods. Now the Gottmans, together with the Love Lab research facility, have put these ideas into practice. In Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, the Gottmans share this vital information so that couples can develop the skills to turn their relationship problems around and create strong, lasting unions.

What emerged from the Gottmans’ collaboration and decades of research is a body of advice that’s based on two surprisingly simple truths: Happily married couples behave like good friends, and they handle their conflicts in gentle, positive ways. The authors offer an intimate look at ten couples who have learned to work through potentially destructive problems—extramarital affairs, workaholism, parenthood adjustments, serious illnesses, lack of intimacy—and examine what they’ve done to improve communication and get their marriages back on track.

Giving an insider’s view of the Love Lab, the Gottmans take the reader step-by-step through the couples’ conversations, before and after they are counseled. The authors also provide an analysis of the couples’ interactions, identifying their core problems and offering suggestions for resolving them. By “listening” to the discussions in this way, you will learn to detect the most common stumbling blocks of a relationship and—most important—how to avoid them.

Hundreds of thousands have seen their relationships improve thanks to the Gottmans’ work. Whether you want to make a strong relationship more fulfilling or rescue one that’s headed for disaster, Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage is essential reading.


From inside the famed Gottman Institute, aka the “Love Lab”: ten scientifically proven, practical ways to strengthen your marriage

“We don’t feel close anymore.”

“You never talk to me.”

“We only have time for the kids.”

“All you do is work.”

“You don’t care about my dreams.”

Do you recognize yourself, or your spouse, in any of these statements? If so, Dr. John Gottman and his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, say you shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, their decades of scientific research have shown that most couples face these and other serious problems—but what the Gottmans have proven is that such difficulties don’t have to lead to a broken relationship, or even divorce.

In Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, the Gottmans provide vital tools—scientifically based and empirically verified—that you can use to regain affection and romance lost through years of ineffective communication. You’ll strengthen your relationship and make it the most fulfilling it can be.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Wonder of Boys

Michael Gurian

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the thoughtful and provocative The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men, therapist and educator Michael Gurian takes a close look at modern boyhood. Gurian asserts that the biological and neurological differences between boys and girls need to be accounted for and nourished in order to raise healthy, happy boys. In discussing boy culture--and the roles of competition, aggression, and physical risk taking--the author concludes, "It's not boy culture that's inherently flawed; it's the way we manage it." If the natural, testosterone-based impulses of boys are squelched or ignored, Gurian posits, such biological truths may find their way to the surface in other, more negative behaviors. He suggests that boys do best when they are part of a "tribe," three families that include: a birth or adoptive family; an extended family of friends, teachers, peers, and mentors; and the "family" of outside culture, media, religious institutions, and community figures. The Wonder of Boys offers advice on how to understand and build strong father/son and mother/son relationships, stresses the importance of healthy discipline, and suggests methods of teaching boys about sex, relationships, and spirituality. Parents and teachers of boys will find this book to be an insightful read. --Ericka Lutz

Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me: A Guide to Living with Impeccable Grace and Style

Lucia van der Post

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 1.0 of 5

poor and mean service 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.

we've never received the book and the seller has been testy and unfriendly when we ask why

Editorial Review:

Lucia van der Post has dispensed advice on style and living for more than three decades. Her subtlety, taste, common sense, confidence, and witty, aphoristic style have garnered her legions of fans, a must-read weekly style column in the Times of London, and a longtime perch at the top of UK lifestyle journalism. Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me—a bestseller in the UK upon publication in fall 2007—is van der Post’s warm, intimate guide to living stylishly through personal elegance, grace, and glamour. Leaving no aspect of a woman’s life unconsidered, the browsable sections include How to Wear Clothes; How to Look Good; How to Work and Have a Life; Love, Marriage and Happiness; Perfect Presents; and Home, Sweet Home.

Iron John: A Book About Men

Robert Bly

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

GURU AMONG MEN 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Robert Bly is a modern day Carl Sandberg. Iron John was on the Top 10 Best sellers list. This is one of my favorite books and I highly recommend it for young boys, men, and women with children that have no father at home! In todays society dysfunctional families are at an all time high and "Iron John" can furnish helpful and insightful information. I really enjoyed the metaphors and mythology; "The lad leaned over and looked into the smooth and reflective pond water and didn't see his own reflection but that of three female wolves looking over his shoulder." The lad lived at home with no father or brothers but with his mother and two sisters and had no identify of his own.

Highly recommend anything on or about Robert E. Howard (1906-1936)The Best of the Best writer/poet ever. Must Reads = Blood & Thunder, The Life & Art of REH by Mark Finn, The Last of the Trunk by Paul Herman of REH Foundation and Selected Letters of REH by Rob Roehm of REH Foundation, One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price, The Dark Barbarian & The Barbaric Triumph by Don Herron, Solomon Kane, Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, The Last of the Frontier, Lord Samarcand, and anything of Weird Works and Weird Tales by Greenberg, Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody, The Star Rover by Jack London, and my favorite The Beast from the Abyss about cats, I Am A Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and The Best of H.P. Lovecraft.

Editorial Review:

In this deeply learned book, poet and translator Robert Bly offers nothing less than a new vision of what it is to be a man.Bly's vision is based on his ongoing work with men and reflections on his own life. He addresses the devastating effects of remote fathers and mourns the disappearance of male initiation rites in our culture. Finding rich meaning in ancient stories and legends, Bly uses the Grimm fairy tale "Iron John," in which the narrator, or "Wild Man," guides a young man through eight stages of male growth, to remind us of archetypes long forgotten-images of vigorous masculinity, both protective and emotionally centered.Simultaneously poetic and down-to-earth, combining the grandeur of myth with the practical and often painful lessons of our own histories, Iron John is a rare work that will continue to guide and inspire men-and women-for years to come.

Men Are Better Than Women

Dick Masterson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Through a process of exhaustive man research he calls "keeping his eyes open," Dick Masterson has compiled a Magnum-size list of the ways men are better than women. It is an infallible compendium of man's greatness, filled with the most egregiously fallacious arguments ever put to words, but with some kind of miraculous, rock-solid man logic dripping like motor oil from every sentence. It is a manifesto more memorable than bullshit like High Fidelity or which Axe baby powder Maxim thinks you should slap on your nuts before clubbing, more chock-full of devastating man quotes than Oscar Wilde with two wangs. Most important, it is the only one of its kind. In Men Are Better Than Women, Dick Masterson dispenses logic from his man mouth into the eyes of his male readers like some kind of mighty mother man eagle with nutrient-rich word vomit. It's a book that makes you feel like driving a train into a dynamite factory and then tearing a telephone book apart with your bare hands, just because that's the way men have always done it.

Masterson's chapters are simple and self-contained, demand no commitments from readers, and have an immediate payoff. Men Are Better Than Women is a dangerous work of satire -- not dangerous in a revolutionary sense, but dangerous in that it walks the razor-thin line between cruelty and absurdity. That line is called hilarious.

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

Rachel Simmons

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel Simmons's brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender. Odd Girl Out begins with the premise that girls are socialized to be sweet with a double bind: they must value friendships; but they must not express the anger that might destroy them. Lacking cultural permission to acknowledge conflict, girls develop what Simmons calls "a hidden culture of silent and indirect aggression."

The author, who visited 30 schools and talked to 300 girls, catalogues chilling and heartbreaking acts of aggression, including the silent treatment, note-passing, glaring, gossiping, ganging up, fashion police, and being nice in private/mean in public. She decodes the vocabulary of these sneak attacks, explaining, for example, three ways to parse the meaning of "I'm fat."

Simmons is a gifted writer who is skilled at describing destructive patterns and prescribing clear-cut strategies for parents, teachers, and girls to resist them. "The heart of resistance is truth telling," advises Simmons. She guides readers to nurture emotional honesty in girls and to discover a language for public discussions of bullying. She offers innovative ideas for changing the dynamics of the classroom, sample dialogues for talking to daughters, and exercises for girls and their friends to explore and resolve messy feelings and conflicts head-on.

One intriguing chapter contrasts truth telling in white middle class, African-American, Latino, and working-class communities. Odd Girl Out is that rare book with the power to touch individual lives and transform the culture that constrains girls--and boys--from speaking the truth. --Barbara Mackoff

Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts : Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World

Regena Thomashauer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Stupid 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I've never given a book a one-star review before. The one star is for the exercises in the book but the writing itself is awful. What a waste of money. I'm not even going to give this one to the library -- it's going straight into the recycling bin.

Attracting What You Want, Just by Being Female 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It was the pink cover that attracted me. I picked it up, and put it down a few different times.

I ended up reading the book over the course of one week, while relaxing each evening in a perfumed bath. How fitting, since the book is all about pleasure. Specifically, female pleasure - of every kind.

Having my way with the world - radiating joy and pleasure as a means to attract, to draw wonderful things toward me--how revolutionary! And better, so much better than what's currently playing on the "female misery" channel!

I tried out Mama Gena's suggestions - "pleasure exercises" mainly because they seemed like fun. People in my world, even strangers, began to respond immediately, treating me like a delicious dish that they could not get enough of ... Just as Mama Gena predicted.

It's quite the adventure, learning to use fun and enjoyment as the barometer for how to lead one's life.

I noticed a copy of this book in my local bookstore yesterday, the last one left on the shelf. Pink as ever, and just as alluring. I'm saying to you now: why not take it out for a spin?

You'll be amazed at how much fun and pleasure can be squeezed into the most ordinary day.

Turn off the "female misery" channel once and for all - and start really living.

Editorial Review:

Relationship expert Regena Thomashauer teaches the lost "womanly arts" of identifying your desires, having fun no matter where you are, knowing sensual pleasure, befriending your inner bitch, flirting (in a way that makes your day, not just his), and more -- because making pleasure your priority can actually help you reach your goals. So if you need a refresher course in fun -- and you know you do -- come to Mama.

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man

Norah Vincent

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Vincent is courageous, but the book falls a little flat... 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Being especially interested in the study of masculinity, I was excited to read this book after hearing about Vincent's initial concept and consequent project. I held off buying the book for awhile, and only purchased it after it came out in paperback. After completing the book a few nights ago, I must say that I almost wish that I had forgotten to read it. In reading the book, I was expecting a courageous account of how difficult it was for a woman to navigate male culture in disguise, and further, how her ensuing journey would complicate simplistic understandings of gender roles in contemporary American society. Instead, I got gratuitous condescension heaped upon a wide variety of underdeveloped-male "characters" - the working-class man in particular, and the emotionally handicapped male in general. Vincent's work is by no means insightful, lacks any real tension, and was tedious to read. The only worthwhile part of the book was the author's discussion of her nervous break that resulted from her experiment. It was the only part of the book that seemed somewhat honest. Yet, while this final discussion elicited some emotional response from me, I could not help but feel a little manipulated - was this addendum a desperate move to add credibility to the banal observations that littered Vincent's work? I grant that Vincent's experiment was a courageous one, too bad the author could not break out of rigid stereotypes about both men and women to actually add something worthwhile to discussions of masculinity and gender in a world where such discussions are sorely needed.

Editorial Review:

A journalist’s provocative and spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent disguised as a man

Norah Vincent became an instant media sensation with the publication of Self-Made Man, her take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Norah spent a year and a half disguised as her male alter ego, Ned, exploring what men are like when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joins a bowling team, takes a high-octane sales job, goes on dates with women (and men), visits strip clubs, and even manages to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. At once thought- provoking and pure fun to read, Self-Made Man is a sympathetic and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.