I love history and I love pirates. Thankfully history never goes away and pirates are more popular than ever. I grew up on stories of Sir Francis Drake, the most prominent of her majesty the queen’s privateer, who took his letters of marquee and seized a place in legend for himself. But I never really got into the true story about the man until I was more grown up. By then I was majoring in history in college and found the stories even more interesting because I recognized them as men who had to overcome their fears before they became swashbuckling heroes.

I was, however, guilty of not thinking overmuch about the lady that gave men like Drake the chance to become my childhood heroes. Her journey, her decisions, were – upon reflection – even harder and more awe-inspiring than her privateers.

Called the Virgin Queen, and that must have been a hard one to deal with back in her day, Elizabeth I rose to the throne a month after she turned 25. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded at the order of her husband Henry VIII. A beheading served as a divorce at the time because the Anglican Church hadn’t instituted divorce as acceptable.

For a while, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and had no shot at the throne. That struggle was only one of many she faced, as well as religious problems within the nation and war with Spain.

Historian Susan Ronald brings all of the adventure and excitement of Elizabeth I’s life to the pages of her book. I’m ADHD and even though I love history, I oftentimes find wading through “scholarly” approaches to material I’m interested in very hard reading. My attention span wanders and I lose track in the middle of baroque sentences.

This isn’t so with Ronald’s book. She effectively nailed me to the pages with her engrossing spinning of Elizabeth I’s trials and travails. When I first hefted the book, and it is certainly hefty, I have to admit to being somewhat daunted. But then I began turning the pages. And kept turning the pages.

Eiizabeth I’s struggles to right the English economy, deal with controversy over her lineage and the religious changes she made, all became drama played out in my mind’s eye. Ronald painted sets with her words, and the people came to life. Reading this book is effortless, and it provides a splendid study of that time and the people involved.

I’d been fascinated by the Spanish Armada and how it was destroyed in 1588, but I hadn’t really felt all that was at stake if they’d won against England. The Cold War that played out between Russia and the United States between 1950s-1980s had nothing on the conflict that took place on the Atlantic Ocean during Elizabeth’s reign.

Although the book focuses a lot on the Queen’s privateers – legalized pirates by any other name – much time is spent with her relationship with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Liecester, Thomas Seymore – who was her guardian for a time, as well as those famous pirates, Sir Francis Drake, and Admiral John Hawkins.

Ronald’s book is an armchair historian’s dream and a keen, mostly unbiased, look at one of history’s most famous and most daring women. If you’ve ever been interested in pirates or English history during a most dangerous time when history could have flipped in any of several directions, The Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I, Her Daring Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire is definitely a book you should pick up.

Although almost 500 pages long, take heart in the fact that the book is heavily documents and several of those pages are reference. The layout of the book, wide margins and easy-to-read typeface, also make it extremely attractive in this time of microscopic fonts.

Until Nickelodeon decided to revamp and update the children’s world in 1991, parents had no problem keeping up with their kids’ cartoon experiences. After all, Bug Bunny and Daffy Duck, the Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo (in so many incarnations) were all staples of a kid’s fantasy world.

As hectic as the world is for a parent, it’s hard to keep up with what shows they’ve watched or are watching when they’re growing up. Sad to say, television cartoons have served as babysitters and best friends for kids for decades.

However, Nickelodeon changed the package when they released Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren and Stimpy Show. Questionable content began to invade American living rooms and kids’ bedrooms in subtle ways. Doug and Rugrats tended to be wholesome fare – though with strange ideas at times.

But there was just no excusing Ren and Stimpy’s behavior. They were gross and inelegant at best, and downright disgusting and offensive at worst. However, your kids thought they were hilarious. If you sat down and watched part of an episode with them, you’d swear they were way too young to be caught up in something as crass as that.

You’d probably be halfway right. But Nickelodeon took the stance that kids were a lot more intelligent – and socially inelegant – than most parents wanted to believe. So they created entertainment that took all those facets into account.

And man, what a whirlwind it’s been these past 16 years. My oldest son turns 25 soon, and my youngest is 10. I had five kids, and Nickelodeon has been a constant feature in my house from the beginning.

The problem with having kids, though, is that you have to work to provide for them. And to provide cable TV. So even though I tried to get in front of the TV to check out what they were watching, I couldn’t do it often enough. I watched some of the Nicktoons (as they came to be called) but not all of them because I didn’t have time.

Thankfully there’s a book out now that will catch you up almost overnight with the thirty cartoon that have and are airing on Nickelodeon. Jerry Beck’s (author of The Hanna-Barbera Treasury and The Art of Bee Movie and other works concentrating on the cartoon pays much you’)monstrous compendium is kid-intelligent and adult-friendly, and it’s heavy and sturdy enough to use as a shield or as a weapon. Not only that, but it was produced with the full support and cooperation of Nicktoons.

When I first pulled the book out of the box, I thought some had gone badly wrong. The book felt…squishy. I let go in a hurry and decided to finish opening the box to have a better look. Then I realized that the book was covered in green slime, another trademark of the network.

Just like a kid, I couldn’t help mashing on the slime book cover to see what I could change and see how long it would retain the impressions I made. It was great fun. If you really want to get a strange reaction from another adult, just hand them the book without warning. The first time they close their fingers in slime, they’re going to freak – and be instantly interested.

Once I opened the book, I was even more impressed. The table of contents is set up with icons of the television shows. One of the games you can play as an adult is try to identify the series from the icon, then open the book to that page to find out if you were right. I got more of them right than I thought I would.

The sections on the cartoons are adult-friendly too. There’s not a whole lot of reading to be done to get up to speed on what the cartoon series was. Background and creative spark, as well as the names of the writers and or directors, are wrapped up in easy-to-read chunks. The artwork is absolutely beautiful, gleaned from storyboards and character concepts all the way up to finished presentations.

While I was reading through the book, picking out my favorite cartoons first (like Doug, Rugrats, The Angry Beavers, Danny Fantom, and Hey Arnold), my ten-year-old dropped in, saw what I was reading, and snuggled into the couch next to me. Then he started telling me what he knew about the characters, favorite episodes, favorite comic bits, and when it was going to be on again, if that was the case. There are unexpected benefits that come from owning this book. And, unlike the television episodes, the book can be turned on at any time.

There’s not a whole lot of reading here to be done, which should be encouraging to you as an adult, because I’m sure your lives haven’t slowed down any more than mine have, but there are a ton of pictures and graphic media. If you don’t think there’s a ton there, try holding this book straight out from your body in one hand!

Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoon! is an amazing compilation of info regarding these shows. The beauty of it is the book makes a great Christmas present (maybe not so much a stocking stuffer) for a kid or an uninformed adult on your list that doesn’t know about Nicktoons but has children. Pick up the book and wander back through the history of your child’s imagination and excitement.

Pulp magazines – periodicals published on paper so poor that pulp debris in the form of wood chips was actually present on many of the pages – had their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. During those years, they were the most popular form of portable entertainment available. People lined up every month at the newspaper kiosks to get the new editions of their favorite magazines featuring over-the-top heroes like Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Spider, G-8 And His Battle Aces, and others.

The pulp format ran the gamut of genres. The magazines featured adventure, crime, private eyes, romance, mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. They even specialized with tales of boxing, aerial combat, and sea stories.

Those old pulp tales saw the rise of several authors that became literary lions: Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales started in them, Dashiell Hammett established private eye characters that would later become Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, Raymond Chandler cobbled his first Philip Marlowe novel The Big Sleep from stories he’d sold to Black Mask Magazine, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury got their starts in those pages.

There was nothing like the pulps. But after World War II, when guys came back from war after seeing how harsh the world could truly be, they didn’t want heroes that were squeaky clean. They wanted tales about things that showed the darkness they’d discovered. As the paperback originals (like Mickey Spillane’s novels about two-fisted P. I. Mike Hammer) started coming out, the pulps gradually died till only a handful of science fiction magazines were left.

I grew up reading the paperback reprints of Doc Savage and The Shadow. I loved those stories. Short, compact, tightly written, filled with death, disaster, mayhem, and action, they filled my mind with endless adventure. You just can’t find stuff like that any more.

However, a new publishing venture, Astonishing Adventures Magazine is trying to bring those halcyon days back to old fans as well as new aficionados of this brand of fiction. They’ve published their first magazine as a PDF that they’re giving away for free on their website (www.astonishingadventuresmagazine.blog-city.com) and it’s jam-packed with stories that usually aren’t more than 3500 words long.

The issue features an interview with writer Joe R. Lansdale, whose own novella, “Bubba Ho-Tep” inspired a cult classic film of the same name. And that story could have been spun from the same fabric as so many of the stories during the pulp era. Just to prove that the practitioners of this kind of writing is still out there.

Another interview features Michael Wm. Kaluta, the artist who brought The Shadow to life in the DC comics run of the 1970s that comics fans remember so well.

There are additional features involving a discussion of Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola’s new book, Baltimore and Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of The Shadow in the movie.

And then there are the stories. Some of them are good, and some of them are thin and violent and off-beat. But that was how it was in the pulps. The buyer picked up a magazine and turned the pages to see what the writers delivered.

And did I mention that this one is FREE!?

The editors, John Donald Carlucci and Timothy D. Gallagher, even roll out submissions guidelines for any would-be pulp writers lurking out there. Entertainment and the possibility of having a pulp story you’ve written accepted? Be still my beating heart. They also offer the caveat that they’re partial to stories featuring monkeys.

Hmmm…

This is the kind of thing I’ve been waiting my whole life to write. So I’m going to send them a story or two at some point. In the meantime, when was the last time someone gave you something for free?

Go to the website and get your free copy. Dig in to see what treasures of story or art that you find. And be sure to spread the news to anybody you think might like this kind of material. There’s just not enough of it left in the world.

David Standish’s Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations and Marvelous Machines Beneath the Earth Surface is an amazing book.

When I first saw the cover, I didn’t think I would be interested. Then I noticed the names that were thrown out with almost careless abandon. Jules Verne. Edgar Rice Burroughs. They weren’t the names of scientists, although scientists are frequently and fairly referenced throughout the book, but I recognized those names at once.

Verne and Burroughs, at one time or another, have been my favorite authors. I loved Verne’s far-fetched adventures. Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are the ones of his that I read the most.

Burroughs, though, taught me an idealistic love because his heroes – John Carter and Carson Napier and David Innes – all fell in love with the most beautiful woman in two worlds. Not only did those women look great (especially the way Frank Frazetta drew them), but they were the bravest and fiercest women you could ever hope to meet.

So Standish drew me in with one of my favorite “conspiracy” theories – that there is another world inside the one we live on as well as promising new dissertations about two of my one-time favorite authors. In fact, the hollow earth theory is still so popular there are a number of websites on the Internet devoted to it. I find it particularly amusing that Adolf Hitler believed in the hollow earth idea so much that he sent troops and expeditionary forces to uncover the entrances. Most speculation was that the openings to the hollow world were at the north and south poles. That’s what drove most of the exploration in those areas.

The book is one part scientific history, one part science fiction history, and one part sheer love of the whole hollow earth theory. Standish does an admirable job of keeping all these elements balanced. If the book and merely been a scientific history, I think I would’ve been put off. But he kept mixing it up with fact and fun. More than that, some of the theories the early signs is came up with about how the world worked are to die for.

I sat down with the book with the intention of reading a chapter or two the first time. Instead, I blazed through over 80 pages of it without stopping. Standish has a really good sense of how much pure information to dump on a reader before reaching critical mass. He changes up from presentation of facts to speculation on his part so smoothly that you don’t notice the transition. Before you know it, you’re thinking right along with him and totally understanding where he’s headed.

Although the chapters are long, with all the illustrations and pictures involved they read quite quickly. I loved learning about the Royal Society’s arguments over how the earth is constructed in the early days. And it was even more fascinating to see how many of the historically important people that we remember for other things also weighed in on the issue of whether or not the earth was hollow.

While reading the book, I was fascinated on a multitude of levels. I couldn’t believe all the scientific conjecture that had gone into such a thing. But I grew up knowing (at least by current belief) that the earth is solid and that the center is a liquid mass of molten iron and nickel. However, another theory that’s lately in the news suggests that there are more cave systems throughout the earth than had been previously believed.

Standish’s book leans heavily on science and the early thoughts of the earth’s composition, from core to exosphere – see, I’m learning, at the beginning of the book. Near to the end, he switches gears and relies heavily on science fiction thinking by popular authors. I found I knew more about the science fiction and the things that I did the early science part. I don’t think I learned anything really new in the last part of the book, but I definitely enjoyed the first part and seeing how it all live in the science fiction novels the loved while I was growing up.

The book is handsomely packaged in hardcover and oversized trade softcover, so you can have either edition for your home library. Scientists and science fiction fans would probably both agree this is a must have for the serious “hollow earth” bibliophile. Even for someone who is neither, Standish’s book is such a pleasure to read that it should be read.

Discovery Channel or the History Channel should take this book up, use it for resource material, and make one of those specials that they do so well. Or potentially even a series. The subject matter is a hoot and Standish reveals so much of the science and history behind the search for the hollow earth that it wouldn’t be hard to put such a project together.

When I saw the title of Marian Salzman and Ira Matathia’s book on trends, Next Now, I was totally lured in. The world is moving at such a frantic pace these days that if you’re not careful, you’ll only be able to keep up with your small part of it. As a father, I like to consider what’s coming down the pipe. I need to be able to advise my kids regarding education, possible job futures, impending medical breakthroughs, health risks, and general states-of-affairs regarding political and economic trends.

I spend a lot of time considering the future and what may or may not happen. And it’s not just about my family. I’m also working writer. The fiction novels I do these days tend to have a lot of research in them. You can’t just write a spy novel with an evil, nefarious villain behind all the bad things that happen to the hero without going into why he’s that way. Readers want to know how that villain is motivated. They want to know what political, religious, or economic sanctions triggered that villain’s point of view.

So I tend to read a lot of online material, periodical magazines, book reviews, books, and watch a lot of television regarding emerging technologies. As it turns out, I’m either more educated in these fields that I thought I was, or the authors of this book didn’t quite go far enough with their explorations of what’s coming next.

Most of material they cover, I was already familiar with to a degree. Moreover, I was disappointed because they usually only superficially skim the surface of material they introduce in the book. In fact, some of the things they write about I’ve already been covering in my fiction for a couple of years. Such as the emerging economic growth of China and the direct challenge to the United States for oil as a consumer. A lot of people blame the oil companies for making vast amounts of profits, and surely they are, but the only reason they’re able to do that is because the market has expanded and the quantity of the product has not. In fact, being more environmentally aware as well as politically conscious of emerging Third World countries has hindered oil production as well.

That increased market has been in the news if you know where to look for it for years. Unfortunately most people, corporate executives are guilty as well, tend not to look at these things. They’re all about the here and now, and don’t focus on the next at all.

Those people will probably be intimidated, shocked, and in awe of what Salzman and Matathia write about in their book. As a primer for the uneducated, Next Now is a great little book that should jumpstart questions and interest. However, those who are fairly fluent in these emerging technologies and trends are going to be disappointed because they don’t get anything really new.

In fact, the book has more focus on the recent past that it does on the next few years it claims it will cover. It’s valuable to a degree in interpreting what is happened and offers some insight into what may be right around the corner.

The writing is workmanlike, though it gets a little clunky of times. Also, there’s a habit of switching topics too quickly. Some of the material begs to be discussed more in-depth and doesn’t receive the attention it deserves.

Furthermore, I would have liked to have more source material available beyond the book. I want to know where the authors got their information, what books or magazines they referenced, who they talked to in order to get the knowledge, so that I might have been able to follow up on some of the information myself.

I’m self-educated in these areas. You almost have to be. By the time a professor puts together a curriculum that will serve to teach you these things, it will be too late to act upon them. I like thinkers. They encourage me to think for myself and to wonder what if.

Next Now is a great book for the uninitiated, but not so much for the professional working in a field that requires glimpses of the coming years.

Over the years since his death in 1977, many books, big screen and television movies, and documentaries have been written and filmed about the legend that was Elvis Presley. Despite the fact that he’s been dead for the last 30 years (although you’ll still find some diehard fans and conspiracy theorists who don’t believe that), Elvis has remained a high-profile figure.

Hardly a year passes without an Elvis sighting. His birthday, January 8, never passes without commentary in the news and on the street. And most people, not just fans, remember the date of his death – August 16, 1977. Add up those numbers, 8 plus 16 plus 1977, and you get 2001 which was also the name of the number Elvis used to close his concerts, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Channel 13 on Sirius radio champions itself as “all-Elvis all the time.”

With all of the books and other materials available, not to mention the fan sites on the Internet, it wouldn’t seem that another book of interest about Elvis would be possible. That’s what I was thinking when I saw the title of Joe Moscheo’s new book, The Gospel Side of Elvis. Still, I was curious. However, once I started reading the book, I was pleasantly surprised.

But first a little background is necessary. Joe Moscheo was a member of the group of gospel singers called The Imperials. The group has been around since 1964 and has had several member changes since then. The Imperials still exist as a Southern gospel contemporary Christian venue.

Gospel music has roots in the church, primarily in the South, and is attributed to the African-American culture. Since its inception, the music has been divided between white and black singers. Even back in the 1950s, Elvis came under fire for listening to black music and bringing it into the rock and roll scene. While reading Moscheo’s book, I discovered that Elvis’s interest in that music was longer and deeper than I’d previously believed.

Looking back over Elvis’s career, you can see that he’s never been far from gospel music. This is one of the trends that Moscheo brings out in his narrative. In fact after Elvis’s success on NBC in 1968 in a show that’s come to be known as the ’68 Comeback Special, Elvis got the opportunity to play the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Normally his backup band was the Jordanaires. They had been with him on the television show and had sung with him for a number of years. Unfortunately, due to success they’d been having, the group wasn’t able to do the Vegas shows.

Elvis’s next choice for backup singers was The Imperials. That was when Joe Moscheo really got to know Elvis Presley. From 1969 to 1971, the group performed with Elvis for ten weeks every year. They also attended the concerts after the concert up in Elvis’s room every night. They became privy to lot of Elvis’s private life.

Moscheo’s book isn’t a tell-all bash of the man who’s heralded as the king of rock and roll. Nor does the author praise or defend Elvis. Rather, Moscheo presents a fairly even-handed picture of Elvis. He acknowledges Elvis’s strengths and weaknesses, the things that made him great as well as the things that brought about his downfall.

I enjoyed reading the book a lot. I grew up in the Elvis era. My mom had been one of the girls who had fallen in love with his music back in the 1950s, then fell in love with him all over again in 1968 when he did the live television special. I’d watched that special and thought Elvis was cool. I still own it on DVD. I knew most of what Moscheo writes about in his book. There’s no new material here. Nothing that hasn’t already been written.

What makes this book so good is that while I read it, I felt like I was listening to Moscheo tell me his story in his own words. The book is written in first person and is chock full of anecdotes, memories, and interpretations that are uniquely the author’s own. Moscheo only talks about those things that he had personal experience with. He makes a statement as much about himself and gospel music as he does about Elvis Presley.

The Gospel Side of Elvis is thoroughly readable. I finished the book in a couple of sittings and was reluctant to be done with it. Moscheo’s writing is diverting and consuming. I could tell that he had loved and respected the man behind the music and controversy. There are a lot of pictures of Elvis and The Imperials during their performances.

There may be other books that deal with much of material found between the covers of this one, but I doubt any of them explore the material in the same personal and entertaining way that Moscheo does. This book will undoubtedly be picked up by the fans as soon as it comes out. But I think it would be a good primer for those who want to learn about the Elvis phenomena that started in the 1950s and still lingers within this world.

  At Amazon

Ah, the vagaries of the human heart.  When I talk about love and what it means, I get all kinds of responses.  Many women cut loose with Oprah-speak, Dr. Phil-speak, and Dr. Laura-speak.  Whatever pop psychology that is currently being turned out into the world.  I talk to men about it, and most of them don’t want to talk about it at all, or immediately tie it to the present sexual climate they have in their relationships.Poets have written volumes on it.  Wars have been fought because of it.  And divorce lawyers have made mints.  Not to mention the latest dating/sex gurus that are on tour.

So what is it about men and women that we can’t speak our minds?  Women I know tell me that it must be great to be married to me.  They tell my wife that as well.  I’m a writer by trade, so I speak my mind.  But I don’t think that’s why I’m as communicative as I am.  I see myself as a student of the world.  I’m constantly learning, and no matter how hard I try, I’m not going to be able to understand it all.  But I put forth the effort because I have to, because that’s the way I am.  I’m ADHD, and explaining what I think I understand to other people – the sheer act of putting it into words – helps me understand things a little better.

My wife agrees with some of the women who have told her that they enjoy the way I’m in touch with my feelings, but she also points out that as communicative as I am, I still don’t always listen and it’s usually my socks that are found lying around the bedroom.  Also, I suffer from the male blindness syndrome of not being able to find my keys, my wallet, or a favorite shirt when I’m trying to head out.  I’m more communicative, but at the end of the day, I’m still limited, still male.  She’s okay with that, though, and it’s part of what makes me attractive to her.  Frankly, it’s my guyness that makes me look on her with love and desire.  Even without the physical relationship, though, we’d still be good friends.  I’m really glad everything has worked out the way it has.

But what do you do for women who want to understand men?  You buy ‘em Men, Love & Sex: The Complete User’s Guide for Women by David Zinczenko with Ted Spiker, of course!

Zinczenko is the editor of Men’s Health, a magazine devoted to helping guys understand all there is to know about being a guy, and how to get the best out of that Y chromosome that makes us so alien to the female of the species.  He’s written op-ed pieces and articles for several metropolitan newspapers and USA Today.  And People magazine listed him as one of the 50 Most Eligible Bachelors.  This is obviously a man who knows men.

Ted Spiker is a contributing editor at Men’s Health and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Florida. So why are they spilling their guts to women?

Because, as Zinczenko mentions on several occasions throughout his book, men tend to be sedentary and won’t bring change in their lives unless they have to.  Therefore, it’s up to the women to bring about the change in a man that he needs but doesn’t know how to reach for or is too frightened about do.  Yep, you read that right.  Men get frightened about relationships.  That’s another point Zinczenko makes in his book.

When it comes down to it, Zinczenko says, men and women really want the same things out of life.  It’s just that too many people (on both sides of the gender line) don’t know that.  They tend to accept that they’re just “different”.

Men, Zinczenko contends – and rightly so from where I’m seated, can’t fathom their own feelings about things.  And then, even those few that are blessed enough to truly know, lack the words to say it to anyone else.  Even among themselves.  Part of being male is being a guy who has no weaknesses.  We’ve all got to be tough guys.  Which means that we’re not going to tell even each other when things aren’t going so well for us health-wise, financially, or in relationships that we really care about.

Five thousand men and women were polled for answers to the questions posed in the book, so it’s not just a personal memoir that Zinczenko has put together.  It’s well researched, filled with the burning questions that women want to know – as well as the surprising answers men have given.

One of the most attractive things about the book is its presentation.  First of all, it’s only a little over 200 pages in length.  It’s a fairly quick read, but it doesn’t stint on information.  As a further enticement, the chapters are short as well, and the pages are broken up into sections dealing with Q&A topics.

A chapter is generally outlined at the beginning, then broken into three or more questions from women that detail that topic with clear, insightful answers given by Zinczenko and supported by answers from men.  As a result, there’s an awful lot of dialogue in the book, and we all know how much we like to gossip and listen in on other people’s conversations.  This book lends itself to that, almost like sitting across an aisle in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the couple seated at that table as they discuss private matters.

The book gets further divided up by sidebars tossed in by the author.  Almost every chapter contains a “Say This, Not That” section, a “What It Means When” section, a “Male Mysteries” factoid that breaks men’s reactions to different things down into a percentage, a “Wondering Woman” section that offers another short but defining question, and a “Say This Tonight!” featuring quotes by men and women.

The book, cleverly disguised of course – unless you don’t mind people knowing what you’re reading, is the perfect material for subway rides, trips to the dentist, anywhere that you’re going to have five or ten minutes at a stretch to devote to it.  The sections are just like Hershey’s Kisses, easy to pop one down, and before you know it, you’ve read a whole chapter!

As a woman, you’ll find a lot to talk about with your girlfriends.  As a man (and yes, I do recommend this book to men as well), you’re going to find out a lot about yourself – primarily that you’re not the only one who thinks or acts a certain way.  Of course, that doesn’t excuse some of how you think or act, but at least you know it’s not just you.

You can read the book from cover to cover if you want.  Or you can read through by chapters.  With 25 chapters to choose from, all of them titled tantalizing questions from Must-Know lists, you can just dive right in and begin your education.  The material is definitely worth more than one trip through, though.  Learning comes along in layers, and the more you get introduced to and understand, the more you’ll be able to discover on return visits.  Plan on buying this one and putting it in an easy to get to place.

I found out a lot about myself as I read the book.  Men and women are different, but we want the same things.  The journeys we take to get them can be quite different, though.  Men, Love & Sex: The Complete User’s Guide For Women is the perfect field guide for the trip across the wide gulf that separates the sexes.