Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives
Author: Laura Schlessinger
Amazon info
I had vaguely heard of "Dr. Laura" (whose degree is in Biology, not Psychology) and I am guessing that her appeal comes from her "No excuses" approach to counseling. There doesn't appear to be much in the way of empathy or letting people work out their problems gradually, but more of a confrontational approach to telling them that THEY are the problem and to deal with it. Interesting to read about, but I am not sure I would enjoy interacting with her.
First things first, Dr. Laura has, IMHO, a very broken definition of "feminist". Her working definition appears to be "evil person" and much of her book is dedicated to feminist bashing. But, in reality, she would be in agreement with many of the core tenets of feminism - namely the idea that women (and men) have the right to choose any career path (or stay-at-home-parent path) and that choice should be respected by men and women alike. For me, the only way to read this book at all was to skip all her ranting and raving and focus on the "10 Stupid Things".
As for those "10 Stupid Things", the source material was from her radio audience - phone calls and faxes (the book is from 1998). And while these sources provide interesting, and very touching, anecdotes - there is a lack of depth from the inability to question and to have longer-term followup. In that sense, the book is fairly superficial - it only touches on the one-time interaction - e.g. "Yesterday I realized how much my kids mean to mean and I am going to be a much better father from now on...". But how did the kids see it? What happened two years later? There were some transcripts of call-ins, and those provide a little more depth (due to questions/answers) - but those are very brief - call-ins don't last for hours.
However, any "self-help" book will always offer some insights and Dr. Laura's provided a few for me. Since the book was a quick read (remember to skip the rants), it has a reasonable insight/time_spent ratio, but probably there are other books out there. I saw this on a friend's shelf and chose it - I wasn't really looking for anything. And, since I had no goal, I accomplished it quite well :).