Men Like Women Who Like Themselves

Self-help authors Carter and Sokol (What Smart Women Know) provide a handbook for the average woman, revealing secrets the ""Smartest Women"" know about meeting, dating and, if they can absorb enough Smart-isms, mating. The authors have basically strung together a series of bullet points that hop unnervingly from topic to topic, and they turn the stuff of human emotions into silly and irritating cliches. Thus, the fact that men are plagued by many of the same insecurities as women, and often have difficulty expressing feelings of vulnerability, becomes: ""Just because he looks like he has everything wired doesn't mean he won't get strung up."" Sound advice on how to recognize a potentially abusive man, when to seek counseling and when and how much to talk about past relationships with a new partner is submerged in a sea of bad puns and thematically unrelated case histories. If the authors' aim was to be lighthearted, their end result is an insultingly reductive look at the infinitely complex, often difficult and sometimes wonderful ways people come together. Author tour. (July)