A Closer Shave: Man's Daily Search for Perfection

There he is again, the hairy beast in the mirror!

Not every man in the world begins his day by removing the night's stubble from his jaw, but 93 percent of the male population thinks taming the monster is the first order of business every morning. Since man invented metal--shortly after he started walking upright--he has sought to scrape stubble from his face without skinning himself alive.

In A Closer Shave, Wallace Pinfold takes the reader on a multicultural, multicentury, and multifaceted tour of the human face as seen from the stainless steel railway of the razor. Through more than 200 photographs and illustrations, cartoons and wood blocks, paintings and advertisements, the story of the shave unfolds, from how to trim a moustache, use a brush, and banish foggy mirrors to famous beards and bald guys in history, to the obsession with shaved heads in professional sports.

This witty little book takes a fast, furious, and funny look at the history of getting a closer, smoother, easier shave--and proves in the process that the male capacity for preening and self-absorption should never be underestimated.

Wallace Pinfold is a French-language interpreter and translator. He has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, a ranger naturalist in Yosemite, and a road manager for country western and blues bands touring the Middle East. He is coauthor of Rising to the Occasion (Algonquin, 1993). He lives in Brunswick, Maine, and shaves every time the occasion warrants.