A review by t_shaffner
The Man's Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab about What Women Really Want by John Gottman, Douglas Abrams, Julie Schwartz Gottman

1.0

I read this book, despite the title and somewhat concerning comments here and there in articles for it, because I'd seen and liked some of Gottman's other work and thought it interesting and insightful. I shouldn't have. The articles about the book which saw it as having a slightly sexist overtone if anything underplayed that tone in the book; it might be the most blatantly sexist book I've ever read. It's chock full of generalizations and stereotypes about how men and women work and how fundamentally different they are, and the interspersing of scientific study anecdotes starts to feel like a thin veneer over a very archaic view of relationships and the world. The perspectives on men alone were downright insulting, assuming us to all be effectively socially ignorant cavemen. On top of that, the vast majority of the "advice" within it is a mixture of very basic elementary relationship advice intermixed with the kind of comments that would fit better in those magazines in the grocery store checkout aisle than a book that purports to be a serious work. There are a handful of genuinely interesting and thoughtful comments or suggestions intermixed with these as well, but they're rare enough and small enough to not be worth the rest.

Maybe for men who fit that caveman stereotype this would be a useful book, and maybe for the world of the 1960s it would be considered forward thinking, but in this day and age it's just bad. If you're looking for a book on relationships and you're a reasonably mature thoughtful adult then find another book; there are far better ones out there.