The Field Guide to North American Males - Softcover

Ingall, Marjorie

3.93

15 ratings by Goodreads

9780805042191: The Field Guide to North American Males

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805042199 ISBN 13: 9780805042191

Publisher: Owlet, 1997

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This handbook imitates the style of other field guides as it lists data in such categories as common and scientific names, plumage, habitat, diet, and courtship behavior. Original. 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo. Tour.

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Review:

This side-splitting book contains everything you need to know about the most common sorts of male humans in North America. Women! Learn to spot each type by simple and reliable indicators such as diet, nest type, foraging technique, plumage, habitat, courtship behavior, and mating calls. Men! There's a 99% chance that you match one of the "species" (remarkably well encapsulated by Ingall's writing) more closely than you'd like to imagine. Some partial excerpts from exemplary entries:

Patriarchal Yet Nurturing College Professor (Schlumpus intellectus)
- Plumage: Untidy, overgrown, tufty hair (entices female students who want to "take care of him"). Vintage tweed or corduroy jacket with elbow patches (note: vintage does not mean elegantly antiquated; it means it's been in his closet since 1981 and has too-tight arm holes and Bic stains on the sleeves) . . . Food on shirt. Hush puppies.
- Habitat: Roams around college campus looking abstracted and forlorn. During mating season, holds regular office hours . . . Eats in undergraduate dining hall to indicate openness to student contact . . .
- Mating Call: "You write with such clarity, so unfettered by theoretical jargon and obfuscated thinking!"
Ugly-Shoe Wearing Public Interest Guy (Nebbish virtuus)
- Plumage: Timex. Battered loafers. Soft-sided briefcase. Tie bought from street vendor for four dollars. Carries the latest Robert Coles or Henry Louis Gates book. Perpetual haunted look.
- Sexual Display: Takes out personal ads that start "Sensitive Seinfeld look-alike seeks . . ."
Witty Advertising Exec (Seductus productus)
- Plumage: Depends on the client. If he is selling sneakers, he dresses like he just stopped by the office on the way to shoot hoops. If he is selling gin, he dresses like a 1930s New Yorker illustration . . .
- Habitat: . . . spends hours soaking up the culture he needs to understand his job . . . watching MTV to see "what the kids are into" . . .
- Sexual Display: . . . talking loudly about how his ideas are too breathtakingly radical for the client. Looks around to see if any cute girls have overheard . . .

The illustrations by Ellen Forney are equally effective in capturing the essential details of each "species." (and don't let the goofy cover photo fool you: Forney's cartoons are great!) Highly Recommended.

From Publishers Weekly:

The floral-and-feather cover of this latest fancifully titled historical by the author of Miss Ellie's Purple Sage Saloon belies its gritty portrayal of relations between men and women and between whites and Native Americans. The year is 1891, and Kate Burke, a married photographer with a burning passion to capture the Old West in its authenticity, finds herself on the nasty end of Colonel Elliot George's temper when she defies his command to stop photographing Indians (or more specifically, the mistreatment of Indians) and stick to making "parlor pretties." The colonel is the kind of guy who collects picture frames fashioned from Indian women's genitals, and one gets the sense that he'd like to add Kate's to his collection. He tries to bring her under his control by blowing up her wagon, leaving her a widow. Kate counters by exposing the colonel through a photograph her late husband had taken, and though the colonel doesn't get the comeuppance readers might want, Kate eventually finds fame as a photographer and an independent happiness. In Kate, Hurd has created a fine, gutsy heroine who is tough as her time, her place and her men.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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