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New York Times Bestseller
Shrewd, sympathetic, and courageous, Self-Made Man is one woman’s take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. With an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rimmed glasses, and her own size 11 ½ shoes, Norah Vincent spent a year and a half as her male alter ego, Ned, and reported back what she observed incognito. Narrating her journey with exquisite insight, empathy, and humor, Norah ponders the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as she explores firsthand who men really are when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joins a bowling team, takes a high-octane sales job, goes on dates with women (and men), visits strip clubs, and even manages to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. Absolutely engrossing in its reporting and surprising in its analysis, Self-Made Man is a thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.
PRAISE FOR SELF-MADE MAN
| “A thoughtful, entertaining piece of first-person investigative journalism. Though there’s plenty of humor in Self-Made Man, Vincent – like her spiritual forbear John Howard Griffin…- treats her self-imposed assignment seriously, not as a stunt….Self Made Man transcends its premise altogether, offering not an undercover woman’s take on male experience, but simply a fascinating, fly-on-the wall look at various unglamorous male milieus that are well off the radar of most journalists and book authors…So rich and so audacious…[I was] hooked from Page 1.” |
| -- David Kamp, The New York Times Book Review |
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| “[Norah Vincent is] the new Steinem.” |
| -- William Safire, The New York Times |
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| “Vincent’s account of how she ‘became’ a man is undeniably fascinating.” |
| -- Los Angeles Times Book World |
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| “Moving and often illuminating….Self-Made Man is an exhilarating book.” |
| -- Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement |
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| “Eye-opening….While the side effects of Vincent’s experiment are fascinating, it is her field reporting from Planet Guy that holds the most novelty. Self-Made Man will make many women think twice about coveting male ‘privilege’ and make any man feel grateful that his gender burden is better understood.” |
| -- Washington Post |
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| “Empathetic, explosive insights.” |
| -- New York Post |
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| “The experiences she describes in her sharp, often poignant prose are page-turningly compelling.” |
| -- Baltimore Sun |
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| “This isn’t a we-are-the-world book in which Vincent rejoices in our common humanity. It’s too subtle for that, too smart and too honest.” |
| -- Time Magazine |
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| “If there’s a more interesting book on the market today, we don’t know what it is.” |
| -- Austin American-Statesman |
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| “Vincent can be a candid and brave writer, always eager to avoid political cant and hackneyed thinking, and this male reader kept turning the pages eagerly. Vincent has glimpsed some things about manhood that hardly any women get to see….Vincent's moments of sharpest perception -- into the intricacies of male camaraderie, or the dreary, mutually hostile gamesmanship of heterosexual dating -- feel unfakable, and if she were making it all up the material would probably be both more explosive and less ambiguous ….Her bowling chapter ("Friendship") is a mini-masterpiece of sympathetic reporting, and there's no question that it took enormous courage for this New York lesbian intellectual to walk into a highly competitive bowling league somewhere in the American heartland, one of the most male of all male sanctums” |
| -- Salon |
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| “The details of her transformation are fascinating… .Compulsively readable.” |
| -- Dallas Morning News |
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| “This thoroughly accessible and well-wrought tale of her year and a half as Ned Vincent is fascinating in its conception, stylish in its execution, and a rollicking good read….It is impossible not to like Vincent, to empathize with her struggles, and root for her success….She pulls it off with passion, gusto, honesty, and a healthy sprinkling of colorful words to flesh out her characters….Vincent’s fascinating experiment makes for a positively delicious read…Brava, Miss Vincent. Atta boy, Ned.” |
| -- The American Enterprise |
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| “Captivating….Will forever change the way you see men – and perhaps yourself.” |
| -- Marie Claire |
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| “Sane and compassionate….It is this confidence and compassion, even more than her derringdo, that make Ms. Vincent such a good secret agent in the gender wards.” |
| -- The New York Sun |
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| “It says a lot that it took a woman to provide such a sharp and entertaining analysis of what it’s like to be a man in the post-feminist world.” |
| -- Mother Jones |
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| “Self-Made Man was a book begging to be written.” |
| -- The Portland Mercury |
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| “Remarkable….Vincent’s experiment could help us fight fewer battles in the war between the sexes.” |
| -- SF Weekly |
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| “Lucid, engaging, and remarkably insightful….It’s a must-read for anyone curious about the masks thrust upon us by gender roles, sexual identity and the surprisingly false conceptions we all have about what makes a man – well, a man.” |
| -- Willamette Week |
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| “Entertaining.” |
| -- Charleston Post and Courier |
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| “A fascinating, truly weird account of a female journalist who dresses in drag for 18 months in order to feel men’s pain…One of the curioser books of late – sure to attract attention.” |
| -- Kirkus (starred review) |
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| “A spellbinding, eye-opening personal narrative….With intelligence and sensitivity, Vincent relates her experiences and surprising discoveries about the secrets and rites of male society and the daily fears and desires of individual men.” |
| -- Library Journal |
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| “Awfully fun to read….For fans of Nickel and Dimed-style immersion reporting, this book is a sure bet.” |
| -- Publishers Weekly |
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| “Funny, compelling, and human.” |
| -- Times of London |
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| “Not many women could away with successfully impersonating a man over a long period, but then, not many men have the balls of Norah Vincent has….This is an addictive, enthralling read: each chapter is progressively more fascinating as Ned becomes more ensconced in his new life.” |
| -- Guardian (UK) |
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| “Masterful. It’s one of the few books about men that has actually made me feel sorry for them.” |
| -- Lionel Shriver, The Guardian (UK) |
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| “Beautifully written, especially in the earlier chapters of pure reportage when she can be as perspicuous and exact as Joan Didion or Gloria Steinem at nailing a hitherto disregarded truth about the sexes in a single elegant and witty phrase….This is a brave and often fascinating book, with Vincent…offering us perspectives that are entirely fresh and new.” |
| -- Times (UK) |
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| “This eloquently constructed book makes for fascinating reading, as much for the chronicle of her own journey as for her insights into the male condition.” |
| -- Metro (UK) |
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| “Fascinating.” |
| -- Sunday Express (UK) |
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| "An extraordinary human document, rich in empathy and insight. Readers expecting a light read about a diverting stunt will find themselves taking a riveting and richly illuminating journey into some of their own deepest truths. You start out peeping into a window and end up staring into a mirror." |
| -- Bruce Bawer, author of WHILE EUROPE SLEPT |
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| “A fascinating, original and often hilarious long day's journey into the world of men. Posing as a man and infiltrating the female-free places males congregate, Norah Vincent finds the male precincts to be a lot better -- and a lot worse -- than most women ever imagine.” |
| -- Christina Hoff Sommers, author of WHO STOLE FEMINISM? and THE WAR AGAINST BOYS |
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| "This gripping book got me through a delayed transatlantic flight beside a shrieking baby. Could I say more? It was high-risk stuff, Norah Vincent's undercover research into what men are like when they're in the places where men are men. The reader's heart beats fast at the chances she took. In adventure writing like this it is the quality of the adventurer that matters. Norah Vincent's perceptiveness, and above all her large sympathies, make her the perfect guide." |
| -- Nuala O’Faolain, author of Are You Somebody? and The Story of Chicago May |
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