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Men Are Not Cost-Effective: Male Crime in America
This provocative and entertaining yet totally fact-based look at the cost of crimes in this country--the majority of which are committed by men--uses documented statistics and numerous anecdotes to provide insight into the problem of why so many boys grow up to be criminals and what can be done about it.
374 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 26, 2022
While "newspapers" like the Daily Mail and the Sun spend everyday deciding which race to blame certain crimes on today, this author actually addresses the elephant in the room.
August 29, 2020
Excellent. Read it LONG ago and it has stuck with me. It grows more and more relevant, and more and more ... right.
July 14, 2020
Holy shit was this book exhausting. Even when I realized the author’s game of endlessly listing crimes committed by men as page-fillers, even when I skipped about 200 pages to get to the “conclusion,” my mind was running like a hamster in a wheel. Seriously. The only thing this book left me was dizzy.
Starting out coherent enough, or maybe I was just young and naive at the start of my reading, the author gives statistics and facts, possible contributors to male crime. She presents problems I expected her to solve by the end of this. Okay, I am ready to have my mind expanded.
Then she gets to THE CRIME. Murder. Bold start. Okay, men murder more than women. Okay, she’s still just telling me about murders. Oh, this chapter is over. The next chapter, White Collar Crime, is where my heart filled with dread and I flipped through the book to confirm that the next 13 chapters were all named after categories of crime. I now see I could have used the table of contents. Using my deductive reasoning, based on the fact that both the Murder chapter and White Collar Crime chapter (I admit I didn’t finish this chapter) were just lists in paragraph form, I skipped alllll the way to the final chapter, ambitiously named Conclusion.
And it was a conclusion in the sense that it was the final chapter of the book. In the sense of bringing the book to a final point, explaining why she had tortured her readers for hundreds of pages? Not so much.
I’m not too proud to admit I have no idea what the fuck the author was going on about. The S&L scandal this, the S&L scandal that. Males be like this; females be like THIS. What was the point of this book? What can the reader take away from it?
Personally I learned to give more than a cursory glance at a provocatively-titled book I find on the Goodwill shelf. I have never burned a book, and I cannot in good conscience return this book to a thrift store or free library to potentially ensnare another unfortunate soul. So it sits on my bookshelf, guarded and unable to spread its curse. A burden that weighs heavily on me but one which I must bear. What weighs on me heaviest of all is knowing that I cannot rest even in death, that my soul must remain on earth to ensure this book is never opened again.
Starting out coherent enough, or maybe I was just young and naive at the start of my reading, the author gives statistics and facts, possible contributors to male crime. She presents problems I expected her to solve by the end of this. Okay, I am ready to have my mind expanded.
Then she gets to THE CRIME. Murder. Bold start. Okay, men murder more than women. Okay, she’s still just telling me about murders. Oh, this chapter is over. The next chapter, White Collar Crime, is where my heart filled with dread and I flipped through the book to confirm that the next 13 chapters were all named after categories of crime. I now see I could have used the table of contents. Using my deductive reasoning, based on the fact that both the Murder chapter and White Collar Crime chapter (I admit I didn’t finish this chapter) were just lists in paragraph form, I skipped alllll the way to the final chapter, ambitiously named Conclusion.
And it was a conclusion in the sense that it was the final chapter of the book. In the sense of bringing the book to a final point, explaining why she had tortured her readers for hundreds of pages? Not so much.
I’m not too proud to admit I have no idea what the fuck the author was going on about. The S&L scandal this, the S&L scandal that. Males be like this; females be like THIS. What was the point of this book? What can the reader take away from it?
Personally I learned to give more than a cursory glance at a provocatively-titled book I find on the Goodwill shelf. I have never burned a book, and I cannot in good conscience return this book to a thrift store or free library to potentially ensnare another unfortunate soul. So it sits on my bookshelf, guarded and unable to spread its curse. A burden that weighs heavily on me but one which I must bear. What weighs on me heaviest of all is knowing that I cannot rest even in death, that my soul must remain on earth to ensure this book is never opened again.
December 17, 2007
When I was younger I was talking with friends and we were discussing the idea that there are descriptions of people, and there are people that describe.
You can say that your friend [fill-in-the-blank], is a very kind, peaceful person.
But if someone were to then ask you what you mean by "kind and peaceful", you would respond that Ghandi and, I don't know, the Dalai Lama, were the examples of kindness and peacefulness.
This book is the very description of a completely asinine, hyperbolic feminine rant on perceived victimization. This is not to say that there isn't a staggeringly gross disregard for the woman in our 21st century, American, hyper-capitalist society. However, every single woman that I have ever spoken to about this book is embarrassed by its premise as well as the appalling lack of solid academic scholarship.
The only explaination I can conjure for this disappoinment to humanity is that they must have a stack of PhDs sitting on a table next to a vending machine in some student union where anyone walking past is more than welcome to pick up and utilize for any purpose imaginable.
They may be used for paper airplanes, paper pirate hats, those little hand toys that decide both your favorite color as well as who you will marry, or you can do like Dr June Stephenson and use that MadLib version of accreditation to gain influence and publish a manifesto that sounds as if it were written by an angry 19 year old on her livejournal account.
I recommend it merely for its sheer insanity.
I would give it zero stars if possible, but I can justify one star to acocunt for her achievement of becoming the definition of asinine acedemic gone amuck.
The saddest part is...
no one stopped her.
You can say that your friend [fill-in-the-blank], is a very kind, peaceful person.
But if someone were to then ask you what you mean by "kind and peaceful", you would respond that Ghandi and, I don't know, the Dalai Lama, were the examples of kindness and peacefulness.
This book is the very description of a completely asinine, hyperbolic feminine rant on perceived victimization. This is not to say that there isn't a staggeringly gross disregard for the woman in our 21st century, American, hyper-capitalist society. However, every single woman that I have ever spoken to about this book is embarrassed by its premise as well as the appalling lack of solid academic scholarship.
The only explaination I can conjure for this disappoinment to humanity is that they must have a stack of PhDs sitting on a table next to a vending machine in some student union where anyone walking past is more than welcome to pick up and utilize for any purpose imaginable.
They may be used for paper airplanes, paper pirate hats, those little hand toys that decide both your favorite color as well as who you will marry, or you can do like Dr June Stephenson and use that MadLib version of accreditation to gain influence and publish a manifesto that sounds as if it were written by an angry 19 year old on her livejournal account.
I recommend it merely for its sheer insanity.
I would give it zero stars if possible, but I can justify one star to acocunt for her achievement of becoming the definition of asinine acedemic gone amuck.
The saddest part is...
no one stopped her.
March 13, 2023
While I agree wholeheartedly with the provocative thesis/title, the bulk of this book reads like a horror catalog of male criminal behavior, which doesn't amount to much more analysis than that of the true crime genre. The conclusion is probably strongest written with recommendations, but when not properly supported by the evidence in the text, I can see people dismissing it as the worst of feminism. It's a shame I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would.
May 27, 2022
Very insightful
April 21, 2016
The title and back cover made this sound like it was going to be at least somewhat facetious. It's not. Instead, we get a long description of everything evil thing men do, followed by a few pages on how a tax on men would work. I'm presenting it to my classes as an example of bad writing.
July 20, 2023
Was this supposed to be scholarly? In case you missed it from the other reviews, this book copies the right-wing approach to minority crime reporting, except it applies it to men. It's a handy guide for men about who to bar from your life completely, and for women about how to develop a stunted worldview and reinforce innate bias.
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July 5, 2012Idk
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews