One of the great mysteries of life (to a man) is the feminine love, no feminine passion, for shoes. Why? we ask - and yet no truly satisfactory answer has ever been given to us.
But if you want to understand women it is as well to understand shoes and this little book is an elementary primer in the woman's shoe over the last hundred years or so - in effect, just 300 pages of pictures of shoes with a bit of background inbetween.
Still, I recommend it - for how else can a man understand the importance of Bally, Ferragamo, Gina, Schiaparelli, Jourdan & Vivier, Cardin, Cadabra, de Havilland, Saint Laurent, Caovilla, Westwood, Blahnik, Chanel, Gucci, Wenkert and Prada.
Perhaps the sheer tasteless lunacy of the 1970s might cause some of us to revolt but, on the other hand, there is real beauty in some of these shoes.
And there is a social history hidden in these pictures - from the days when a woman might be regarded as middle class if she had a full four pairs in an era of austerity through the power-dressing 1980s to the ostentation of the world before the credit crunch, shoes designed for dictator's mistresses.
This is really a little book for women by a woman but very occasionally a man will get a thrill when the shoes implies the woman who wears it. Not often but sometimes. Then there is a brief erotic frisson.
Those moments are interesting - they are always the simplest of shoes and boots, precisely not what most women want in their cupboard ... but then women do not wear shoes for men, they wear them for themselves and for other women ... and why not?