Assholeology

The latest in a long line of “How to be a Jerk” books, and this one doesn’t really add anything to the body of knowledge on the subject. Aside from the more-orless up-to-date pop culture references, you can get the same thing from any of the other books with a similar premise as this one. And with most of those, you can also tell whether it’s trying to be serious about how being an asshole will make you more successful, or satirizing the concept.

With Assholeology, it’s never really clear. It’s not serious enough to be serious, but not funny enough to be considered a humour book. It would be hard to write a book like this without some sense of humour either way, but the jokes mostly come off as cheap, frat-boy stuff rather than anything actually incisive. Which makes me think, they’re probably not really trying to parody the “nice guys finish last” philosophy here as much as they are just…well…being assholes. (Richard Rosenbaum)

by Steven B. Green, Dennis LaValle Chris Illuminati; $12.95; 224 pgs Adams Media; adamsmedia.com