Featured This Month
We've made our picks of the Five Best Works of Fiction of the Last 25 Years. These you simply MUST read.
Our June 2001 Fiction & Non-Fiction Picks of the Month. Hey, not all bestsellers are trash!
Agent 007, deconstructed in Licence to Thrill
The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel
How to Be A Gentleman, a guide for the totally clueless
Just our kind of self-help book:The Machiavellian's Guide to Womanizing
Read The
48 Laws of Power
and take over
the world
The Machiavellian's Guide to Womanizing
By Nick Casanova
Castle Books
Reviewed by Shawn Rahman and Brian Wilson
If literary
prizes were given solely for shamelessness, then The Machiavellian's
Guide to Womanizing by Nick Casanova (he surely must be hiding from
someone with that name) is one of the greatest books of all time.
This shallow but often hilarious and brazen book must surely have raised
a few eyebrows (and a few other things) upon its first release five years
ago. It's the literary version of an off-color joke - the kind a cad would
make to a woman, quickly to be followed by a "just kidding".
But only after the dirty look supplants the desired reaction.
The cover notes of the most recent edition of the book (Castle Books, 1999) admits that the aptly named Mr. Casanova's guide is more tongue-in-cheek than anything else. But the book often tries to take itself seriously - professing to teach the ins and outs of countless situations men might find themselves in when attempting to pick up women. Naturally, no women are spared - divorced, widowed, old, young, virgins, bookworms - Casanova tells us how to bag each type.
The tome
actually touches on the same hot button items that self-help interpersonal
communication books do, which underlines its serious side, yet it twists
every situation to the way a tally counter would view it. It can be viewed
as either funny, tasteless or educational depending on your reasons for
reading it. With chapter titles such as "Sneaking into Her Roommate's
Room" and "The Recent Widow" - which provides pointers
for nailing the bereaved at her husband's funeral, only the truly treacherous
could take the book seriously. Yet, the methods contained within do provide
for many head-shaking laughs and a few moments to stop and ponder before
either dismissing them - or not.
In all, though, most of the situations present are not nearly so tasteless
and merely manipulative - so much so that the book takes more of a serious
"how to" nature. Regardless of how you view the book, its a
humorous read at worst for either gender and surely a book you don't want
to leave out on the mantle if you're a man. Unless, of course, you think
a quick "just kidding" will get you off the hook.
So brazen and in your face are the methods described by Casanova, that it is often easy to think that the joke is really on the reader. You won't come across too many other books so lacking in moral fiber as this one. More than a few of the tactics suggested in this book are sure to garner swift smacks to the face in lieu of phone numbers or amorous looks from women. As outrageous as the book tries to be, it very often overdoes it - so much so at times that its credibility begins to fall apart. It thus becomes inadequate as a guide to actually seducing women.
As the wars between the sexes are destined to rage on long after we are all gone, there will always reasons for books like this to exist. Serious or not.