Satire, I like it. Snark, I don't mind it a bit. DIY, I'm down, but moronic mansplaining is a hard pass. Skip it.

Unfortunately, with many online options and videos (YouTube), I think this book is a bit outdated. Content is definitely timeless, but I'm not sure if the audience for this book would appreciate its contents. Overall there were some interesting topics to engage with. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

I tried to come up with a more polite summation of this book, but all that I could muster is utter sexist garbage. The title alone should have been the indicator, but I took it as satire. After the first few "skills" it was clear that tongue was not in cheek; women are mentioned in passing as nags, and fairly needy yet skill-less beings a "Man" has to flex his skills in order to pacify. The skills are organized by a chapter setting (i.e. Home, Dining, Cars, Nature) and include entries such as fixing a running toilet, hanging drywall, fishing without a pole, fighting a dog (?? which includes the eye roll line "your opponent now knows who the top dog is"), cook a lobster. Each breakdown explanation is on average a paragraph in length and does about the bare minimum of explaining what the "Man" needs to know and do in order to be called a "Man" and not just "man". Seriously, who is this book for exactly? Why did it need a "revised" edition? One "how to be a basic sexist jerk" entry should have been more than enough. If one were trying to learn skills, I'd recommend Google and YouTube, not dropping $20 on a title that thinks it's a great idea to further distinguish a man's role versus a woman's and gets off on attempting to shame men into believing they are not "real men" without the questionable advice and knowledge of this book.

Before problems the world over with mansplaining, we had rubbish that told you the right look and behaviour and skill set for a Real Man. It was basically a way for half the species to be pissy about the rest of their fellow men, and women were only supposed to be interested in the Gillette TV ad guy, and only then if he knew what flowers to give a girl on which occasion, how to cook a seven course meal for under a quid, and how to build a car to take her down lover's lane (and navigate by the stars to a secret hotel he'd decorated and done the plumbing for himself that afternoon). It was, of course, all utter bollux, insulting, sexist – and homophobic. Which makes this volume, a throwback to the 2011 edition, a bit of a surprise.

Suffice to say this Real Man found the first page, a mention of handsaws that were binding and screws that had been stripped. And I'm still not sure what either of those things are. The rest isn't quite as alien, although where in real life I'm supposed to find a mountain lion, or the need to do a three point turn in a power boat in the middle of my city still baffles me. I suppose I can take some of the DIY, automotive, and survival information as truthful, because I'll never need those chapters. Having said that, this book says you put water in with your eggs to make an omelette. Major fail. So some of this might be creditable, but the fact of this book's sustained existence and repeat appearance on the store shelves is almost the exact opposite.

Here's a bonus etiquette lesson from me – if she buys you this book as a present with any hint of sincerity, turn to the page on dumping someone with dignity, and throw it and the rest of the book at her. Hard.