The Book of Man, by WIlliam Bennett: A Review

When I saw the title and brief description of "The Book of Man", and noted it was written by former politician William Bennett, I had zero interest. I later saw a clip of him promoting the book, and the short clip consisted of him complaining. He complained about feminism. He complained about the emasculation of men. He even complained about the fact that a woman was taking over as CEO of Hewlett Packard. Or maybe it was IBM. At any rate, I'm not a big fan of complaining, especially professing Christians complaining that the world is against them and their values. So my interest in the book went to less than zero.

But then, by chance, I went back and read a more thorough description of the book. I found it wasn't 500 pages of one man's complaints about cultural changes. It is, in fact, nothing like what I thought. The Book of Man is a collection of essays, observations, true stories, and anecdotes about men. About the character of a man. About how the bar is raised for men. About how a man can best benefit those around him, starting with his wife and children, but extending far beyond that.

This isn't the type of book to be read straight through, although you certainly can choose to do so. To me, it's more of a coffee-table book; something you can go back to and take in small bites, as needed. I'm finding parts that I would love my sons to read. Others for my daughter to read, to help her know that she needs to have high expectations for any man who wants to be part of her life.

My take: my complete misunderstanding about what The Book of Man is about almost kept me from enjoying an excellent read. Now that I have it and have gone through it, I highly recommend it. One doesn't need to be a Braveheart-loving, feminist-hater to benefit from this book.

I only hope that the publisher (Thomas Nelson, who provided me a free review copy through their Booksneeze program) will find a way to communicate what this book is really about. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who didn't get it the first time around.

Comments

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly. In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history. As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room...

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those ...

The Two Christmases

As I walked through the front door of the Post Office to make my stamp purchase, I was faced with a choice. On my left was a vending machine, and to my right was the customer service desk, where I could make the purchase from actual human beings. Because there was no line at the moment, I chose the human interaction. I strolled up to the middle-aged, slightly balding postal employee, read that his name was "Rex", and I asked for two books of stamps. As it was mid-December, Rex asked me "would you like Christmas stamps, or...". Once I realized he wasn't about to complete the sentence, I looked down and saw that he was holding some very un-Christmas-like stamps bearing images of the Liberty Bell and the word "Forever." Knowing that my wife had planned to mail several Christmas cards, I told him "One of each." To my surprise, the decision-making did not stop there. Rex hit me with a follow-up: he held up two types of stamps: one had a pi...

Middletree

Search This Blog