The Manual: Steve Santagati

Let's cut right to the chase. This is a dating advice book written for women by a professional male model / self-professed Bad Boy. It claims to give women the upper hand in dating by clueing us in to why Bad Boys are great, how they think and function, and how to match (or beat) them at their own game. Given how heavily it has been promoted on Today, Rachael Ray, and The View, you'd almost think it was the next magnum opus of Dr. Phil (oh, wait, that's right... his career is going down the pot faster than dysentery).

If you've made it past the words "dating advice book", you're probably asking: But does it deliver? In a word, yes. However, it's not doing it with the high-brow, new-age pop psychology tactics that normally create best sellers and talk show appearances. In fact, I'm not sure there are any words in this book with more than three syllables. The advice being dished out is pretty straightforward common sense stuff - simple things, even - that North American women seem to have thrown out the window with the advent of "equality", "feminism", and "depth". Just because we changed the social rules of how men are expected to act in public, that does not mean we've done anything towards changing their basic programming and thought processes. (That's good, because otherwise they would have found more interesting things than women.)

I am not going to laud Santagati with praise and call him any sort of genius. He's not. He does, however, have a pretty slick schtick going on that seems to work for him. This book probably could have been written by just about any halfway literate guy who was tired of coaching all his female friends and sisters; Santagati is just the first one to do it... and have it properly publicized. The Santagati website is also a clever accompaniment to the book. If nothing else, you'll get some good chuckles - unless you're an uptight tit who can't handle a dirty joke, in which case I doubt there's any book that can help your love life.

This is worth a library visit for women of dating age who are seeking something light, fluffy, humorous, easy, and potentially useful. It is not worth my method of acquisition: Walking 20 minutes to my town bookstore, asking them to special order it, waiting over a month for it to arrive, walking another 20 minutes down there, and shelling out around $30 CDN.

And Rachael Ray? Your little blurb on the back cover? I didn't like you much before, but creation and use of the word "mible" (RR definition: "a Bible on men") just sealed your place in my Hall of Eternal Suck.

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Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Pub. Date: May 27, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780307345707