Books/Media Archives

The Curse of the Oversized Ego

NOTE: This article was originally published at Right On on March 5, 2016. I’m re-posting it here as the site is now defunct.

The Curse of the High IQ is a book that needed to be written, a truthful lamentation of how society discriminates against the gifted. Unfortunately, it’s derailed by Aaron Clarey’s sloppy research and poor writing.

Aaron Clarey is who I want to be when I grow up. Best-known for his blog Captain Capitalism, Clarey has built up a following over the past decade by offering cogent economic advice and snappy social commentary in between his hiking and biking adventures. Worthless, aimed at helping high schoolers avoid wasting their time and money with useless college majors, is a book I’d wish I had when I was a teenager; Enjoy the Decline is a sardonic survival guide for the Obama era; Bachelor Pad Economics may be the most comprehensive guide to personal finance ever written.

However, with The Curse of the High IQ, Clarey has finally reached his level of incompetence.

Anyone who’s ever had to attend a public school or hold an office job knows that smart people are at a disadvantage in Western societies. Clarey’s book bills itself as an examination of why society despises the intelligent and what they can do about it. While The Curse of the High IQ has a lot going for it, Clarey’s lazy argumentation and terrible writing hang from the book’s neck like a pair of obese albatrosses. Because of this, I have difficulty recommending it to anyone who isn’t already a fan of his.

Clarey begins the book by discussing a number of his friends who are depressed and unhappy despite being gifted and successful at their careers or hobbies, identifying the cause as their abnormally high IQs. The book’s chapters each focus on a different aspect of life, from education to work to dating, showing how intelligent people are handicapped every step of the way. While some of Curse’s points are dead obvious—for example, we all know that the obsession with celebrity culture and team sports is driven by the increasing stupidity of the average American—others ring poignant and nearly make the book worth the price of admission on their own.

For example, one of the highlights of the book is the “Education” chapter, where Clarey discusses how America’s Prussian-derived school system rewards conformity over excellence. As someone who was repeatedly punished in grade school for being intelligent, this was particularly eye-opening. In particular, in elementary school, I would often nod off during lectures because I already understood the material, which I proved by getting straight As on every test. In fourth grade, I had frequent run-ins with a teacher’s assistant who would confiscate the novels I read during class, tsk-tsking me by saying there was “a time and a place.”

Curse’s true standouts are the “Career” and “Socializing, Dating and Marriage” chapters. The former concentrates on how political correctness, psychopathic bosses, and the feminine nature of white-collar work make employment a living hell for those on the right side of the bell curve. The latter is a particularly depressing explanation for the loneliness that afflicts intelligent men and women. With brainy people in short supply, the gifted either have to dumb themselves down and pretend to like sportsball and the Kardashians, or otherwise get used to being alone.

Unfortunately, in order to get to these chapters, you have to fight an uphill battle against Curse’s ghastly prose. Clarey’s book has so many typos and such mangled grammar that reading it gave me a minor headache. In fact, his writing is so bad that I doubt he even bothered to run Spellcheck before he put the book on sale. Here’s a sampling of Cappy Cap pinning the English language to the ground and refusing to take no for an answer [sic]:

Children is the third and most devastating stage of attrition to your social life. And the reason why is because it has to be. When people have children they (should) give up their current life to ensure their children are properly raised in theirs. And while your friends’ breeding may be the death knell to your social life, it would be the epitome of child abuse if they prioritized their social lives over their children.

I plucked this passage out at random, but there are countless examples in the book that are just as bad or worse. Not only is Clarey’s writing horrifying enough to induce physical pain, his slapdash prose undermines his core thesis. The Curse of the High IQ‘s central argument relies on the fact that Clarey himself is intelligent and has suffered because of it; in fact, he uses examples from his own life to make his points. Well, Mr. Clarey, if you’re so smart, why do you write like you have an IQ of 90?

Of course, I know that Clarey’s a sharp guy: he is my friend, after all. His problem is that he’s lazy. By his own admission, he doesn’t read many books, preferring to spend his free time climbing mountains, playing video games, or doing cross-country motorcycle trips. He stubbornly refuses to proofread his work or study the craft of writing, arguing that because he already speaks English, he doesn’t need to learn how to write it. That’s like arguing that engineers don’t need to study math since they already know basic arithmetic.

Curse also has several factual inaccuracies that drag the book down. For example, Clarey alleges that intelligent people tend to be night owls, and night owls are discriminated against thanks to the 9-to-5 workday that society is structured around. In reality, scientific evidence shows that people are healthier and more productive when they wake up early and go to bed early instead of staying up all night. In bringing this issue up, Clarey is trying to rationalize his lifestyle choices.

Additionally, near the end of the book, Clarey tries to argue that mental illness and intelligence are correlated, that society’s jihad against the gifted literally drives them insane. Again, this is bunk. There are numerous causal factors for mental illness, such as child abuse, sexual abuse, genetics, and drug usage, but having a high IQ is not one of them.

It’s a shame that Clarey took such a shoot-from-the-hip approach with The Curse of the High IQ, since the book is one that we needed, one that examines a topic that few dare to touch. Had Clarey taken his time with Curse, carefully researching his points and revising his prose, the book could have been a true masterpiece. As it stands, only serious fans of Captain Capitalism—or those with a high pain threshold—should buy it.

Click here to buy The Curse of the High IQ.

Hail, Caesar! and the Artifice of Hollywood

NOTE: This article was originally published at Right On on February 17, 2016. I’m re-posting it here as the site is now defunct.

Hail, Caesar!, the Coen brothers’ latest film, is a masterful and comic examination of Hollywood during the 1950’s.

If movies are the quintessential American art form, the Coen brothers are our Shakespeare. In a career spanning three decades, their films have examined just about every nook and cranny of the American milieu, from white trash in rural Texas (No Country for Old Men) to puffed-up, pretentious government employees (Burn After Reading) to naive, gullible Midwesterners (Fargo). The Coens have honed their craft to such a degree that even their dud films (The Ladykillers, The Hudsucker Proxy) are still interesting to watch.

The Coens’ films are defined by their willingness to examine aspects of American life that are usually wallpapered over by both Leftists and conservatives. 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis is a tale of a man who failed at life during the most prosperous period in American history; The Big Lebowski is about a sixties hippie burnout dealing with a world that’s left him behind; A Serious Man examines emasculation and matriarchy in Jewish culture. While their films borrow stylistically from directors of the past, the Coens are capable of making what they steal their own, unlike other postmodern hacks such as Quentin Tarantino.

Hail, Caesar!, the Coens’ latest film, continues their tradition of lifting up the floorboards of American culture to reveal the rot underneath. A savage look at Hollywood’s Golden Age, Hail, Caesar! is another display of the Coens’ ability to weave comedy and suspense into a cohesive whole. While it falls short of greatness, it’s funny enough to make it worth a watch.

Set in the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! revolves around Capitol Pictures production head Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) and his quest to keep his stars’ scandals out of the public eye. The title refers to the studio’s feature movie, a Cecil B. DeMille-esque production on the life of Christ. The plot is set into motion when Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the dopey, alcoholic star of the aforementioned film, is kidnapped by a gang of Communist screenwriters.

Hail, Caesar!‘s central plot is fairly threadbare by the Coens’ standards; the film’s emphasis is on the idiocies of Capitol Pictures’ actors and directors. Much screen time is dedicated to Mannix’s quest to arrange a sham marriage for DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) after she gets knocked up out of wedlock, as well as “singing cowboy” Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) coping with being horribly miscast in a period drama. The film also makes time for a hilariously homoerotic Fred Astaire-style dance number starring closeted Marxist Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum).

The movie succeeds due to the Coens’ comedic touch and attention to detail. Little things, such as Baird Whitlock spending most of the film in a Roman toga and getting his sword holster stuck on chairs, are what sell the movie and keep the laughs coming. For his part, Clooney steals the show; his character’s aggressive idiocy is a callback to his roles in previous Coen films such as Burn After Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Coen brothers are masters of using “negative space”: what they don’t emphasize in their films is almost as important as what they do. Hail, Caesar!‘s unstated theme is image: the artificiality of Hollywood and popular culture at large. The film is defined by the phoniness of its characters, whether it’s Mannix working to keep a lid on his stars’ indiscretions, Moran arranging a fake adoption to cover up her pregnancy, or a pair of gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) threatening to publish rumors about Whitlock’s homosexuality.

The Coens previously explored the manufactured nature of the movie industry in Barton Fink, which depicted Hollywood in its infancy. That film’s titular protagonist found himself crushed between his high-art Broadway pretensions and the mass-market drivel he was expected to write. Hail, Caesar! depicts a Hollywood reeling from the 1948 United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. decision, in which the Supreme Court dismantled the studio system under antitrust laws.

While TCM and Robert Osbourne may paint a rosy picture of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the reality is that the Paramount decision effectively ended it. Hail, Caesar! shows the movie industry’s fall from grace in the fifties and sixties, as they resorted to increasingly bombastic productions such as Cleopatra and How the West Was Won to maintain profitability and compete with the emerging medium of television. The film is aided by cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose glossy, colorful landscapes, flimsy sound stages, and poorly-designed props (for example, an animatronic whale near the beginning had me howling) accurately recreate the artificiality of 1950’s cinema.

For all its farcical whimsy, though, Hail, Caesar! is also a tribute to one of the few filmmakers who rose above the pomp and circumstance of his time: Alfred Hitchcock. While Barton Fink alluded to Hitchcock as well (most notably in imitating the train tunnel “sex scene” at the end of North by Northwest), Hail, Caesar! ups the ante by naming one of its minor characters “Carlotta Valdez,” a reference to Vertigo. The film also draws inspiration from other 1950’s Hitchcock thrillers such as The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first film directors to examine the artificiality and constructed nature of movies themselves. Everything about Hitch’s films, from his much-publicized cameos to the plots themselves, focuses on the blurry line between reality and fiction in Hollywood. North by Northwest is about an ordinary man mistaken for a spy who, by the end of the film, has become a spy of his own volition; Rear Window merges Jimmy Stewart’s character’s perspective with the audience’s, turning them into Peeping Toms; Psycho depicts a man so distraught by his mother’s death that he assumes her identity.

As overrated as it is by critics, Vertigo is the best example of Hitchcock’s motif of film as deception. At its heart, Vertigo is a story about image: Scottie Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) falls in love with a woman pretending to be someone she is not, who is in turn pretending to be possessed by the ghost of her great-grandmother. She’s a matryoshka doll of false identities, her relationship with Scottie a Jenga tower of lies. Scottie’s madness and desperation to recreate his fake relationship with Madeleine is a commentary on movie audiences, who choose to deceive themselves for entertainment.

Similarly, Hail, Caesar! is a commentary on nostalgia among film buffs and the golden era they mythologize. It also serves as a warning about the state of modern Hollywood. Capitol Pictures’ obsession with high-budget spectacle has eerie parallels to today’s film industry, which is piling its money into sequels, special effects and comic book movies in a desperate attempt to keep ticket sales from declining. Innovative, visionary directors such as David Lynch have been handed their pink slips as movie studios pump out schlock like Guardians of the Galaxy, Mad Max, and an endless succession of Star Trek and Star Wars sequels. Just as the Golden Age of Hollywood ended, this situation cannot last.

As thin as its central plot may be, Hail, Caesar!‘s big-picture analysis and attention to detail provide enough guffaws to make it well worth watching. All hail the Coen brothers: they haven’t let us down yet.

Social Justice Wars

NOTE: This article was originally published at Right On on December 21, 2015. I’m re-posting it here as the site is now defunct.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens rehashes A New Hope for the lowest common denominator, with a side helping of Leftist propaganda. What is good about it is not original, and what is original is not good.

In his memoirs, Alec Guinness recounts a story in which he gave an autograph to a fan of his who claimed to have seen Star Wars over a hundred times, on the condition that the boy never watch the movie again. He was so shocked that he started crying, with his mother insulting Guinness before huffily ushering her son away. Guinness wrote in response that he hoped “the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”

I can only assume that poor Sir Alec is spinning in his grave so fast right now that the south of England is quaking like San Francisco in 1906.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted last Friday, summoning legions of unwashed manbabies to the theaters like battered housewives to their abusive husbands. After the six-year limp-out that was the prequels, I’m astounded that anyone could view the prospect of another Star Wars film with anything more than cautious optimism. But apparently, no one will ever go broke underestimating the taste of the average nerd; the theater I went to had a line of dweebs going out the door (in below-freezing Chicago weather).

I went to see The Force Awakens for the explicit purpose of tearing it apart for Right On, but I left the theater less enraged than depressed. J. J. Abrams’ take on Star Wars is a blatant ripoff of the original film, with whole scenes lifted from George Lucas’ movie (such as the trench run on the Death Star). His only contribution to the series is a heaping pile of anti-White agitprop, like a dog turd stapled to a Big Mac.

The sad thing is that Abrams’ cultural Marxism isn’t even egregious enough to hate. The Force Awakens is so formulaic that it almost induces narcolepsy. The film exists for one reason: to swindle more money out of the fanboys. It’ll make a ton of cash for Disney, revive interest in the franchise, and help sell more plastic toys to middle-aged men who never grew up. Everything about the movie feels prefab and insincere, right down to the unnaturally shiny uniforms the stormtroopers wear.

Counter-Currents’ Trevor Lynch already pointed out how The Force Awakens is basically a shinier remake of A New Hope, so I want to concentrate on the actual changes Abrams made to the plot. In particular, his Luke Skywalker stand-in Rey (Daisy Ridley) is quite possibly the most unlikable, unrealistic female lead in a film since Lieutenant Uhura in the Star Trek reboot (itself another Abrams production).

Ridley’s character is you-go-grrl feminism taken to its cartoonish logical conclusion; in fact, the Leftist media is already declaring her a “feminist hero.” Despite being a 14-year old homeless orphan who scavenges junk in the desert to survive, Rey can effortlessly pilot any ship, use the Force to stage a jailbreak, and master lightsaber combat in the span of about a day. In fact, the film’s final scene is a duel between Rey and antagonist Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), which she wins. Keep in mind that it took Luke until the end of Return of the Jedi before he could so much as hold his own in a fight with Darth Vader.

This blatant Mary Sue-ism would be less offensive if Abrams had any clue how to inject human warmth into his characters, but Rey constantly comes off as vindictive and insecure. For example, in one early scene where Rey and Finn (John Boyega, the “Mace Dindu” affirmative action hire) are being carpet-bombed by TIE fighters, Finn grabs her hand only for her to slap him down: “Don’t hold my hand.” If I was in Finn’s place, I would have just let her get napalmed, but what do I know?

Indeed, The Force Awakens rests on a visible undercurrent of anti-White, anti-male hatred. Han Solo is depicted as a terrible father and two-bit con artist who won’t grow up; Harrison Ford plays him like a cranky old whore disgusted at the increasingly degrading tricks she has to turn in order to put food on the table. Luke Skywalker is shown as a reclusive failure who abandoned his friends after his actions plunged the galaxy into chaos. Kylo Ren is a whiny emo played by the guy who portrayed Lena Dunham’s boyfriend in Girls (no, I’m not kidding). Even Mace Dindu isn’t spared, as the only character trait Abrams gives him is cowardice (apparently unaware that depicting Black men as fraidy cats is a racist trope from the bad old days).

These cultural Marxist clichés aren’t wholly Abrams’ fault: Hollywood films have been sliding in this direction for at least the past decade. Every major action film these days is dumbed down for an audience that has the attention span of an aphid. ADHD editing and rapid cuts make it impossible to follow the action; CGI is overused, making everything look glossy and fake; characters are constantly yelling at each other because modern moviegoers are too stupid to appreciate subtlety.

Most importantly, the only way Hollywood can create “strong” female characters is by depicting them as flawless Überfrauen with heavy flow. Gone is the subtlety and complexity of Kira Nerys, Audrey Horne, or even Rachael in Blade Runner. Hell, Princess Leia in the original films fits the bill. Carrie Fisher famously described Leia as a “distressing damsel” as opposed to a damsel in distress, but for all the barbs she traded with Luke and Han, she didn’t have ice water running in her veins.

I was never a big fan of Star Wars—the first film was released more than a decade before I was born—but they’re genuinely good movies, regardless of nerds’ creepy fascination with them. The original trilogy is a fun story with interesting, likable characters set in a compelling world. Even the prequels, as poorly written and unwatchable as they are, featured original ideas. They weren’t executed well at all, but Lucas was at least trying.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has no ideas. It’s a cynical cash-grab from the first frame to the last, leavened with Leftist mumbo jumbo to further subvert our culture. Were it not for the Star Wars name, it’d be one of those popcorn flicks that people see to pass the time, then forget about as soon as they leave the theater. Even from a hate-watching perspective, Abrams’ baby falls flat.

Skip this one.

Free Speech Isn’t Free by Roosh V

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, Roosh’s harrowing account of how the left has tried to deprive him of his right to speak his mind and share his ideas, I thought of a story from the life of Irish independence leader Michael Collins. During the latter stages of the Irish War of Independence, when Collins was orchestrating an insurgency against the British, his niece was hired as a secretary to an official in the occupying British administration. When he got the news, he spat out, “How the hell did these people ever get an empire?”

That’s what I have to say in regards to the Trigglypuffs and AIDS Skrillexes of the world: how the hell did these people ever get any power?

Roosh’s answer: they’re useful idiots. Free Speech Isn’t Free is more than a memoir: it’s an examination of Roosh’s evolution from hedonistic playboy to neomasculine patriarch. The book’s focus is on how Canadian feminists—in concert with the media and government—sought to shut down the final two stops on his world tour last year through shaming, lies and physical intimidation. However, Roosh also discusses his political awakening, as he pieces together the last pieces of the cultural Marxist puzzle.

Because of this, I wholeheartedly recommend Free Speech Isn’t Free to anyone who cares about preserving Western, white culture and freedoms.

The book opens with Roosh discussing why he launched his world tour and the process by which he prepared. Much like in his previous memoirs, we see a personal side to Roosh that he doesn’t present in his blog writing, as he talks about his stuttering problem and his efforts to overcome it. The chapter also discusses the logistics involved in organizing the tour and the mistakes he made along the way:

The biggest job, by far, was preparing the speech. My experience in Toastmasters showed that it takes one hour of preparation for each minute of a speech. At a planned time of 45 minutes, I knew I was in for a serious commitment. First, I edited the speech’s written draft into its final form. Then I read it out loud about ten times to get a feel for how it comes across when spoken, continuing to edit along the way. Then I began reducing the speech to an outline, where I’d take a sentence of the speech and replace it with a short phrase. When I came across the short phrase in the next practice run, my mind would hopefully remember the longer sentence it represented. This process took about three weeks since the speech was so long, until I eventually reduced the 6,099 word speech into a 734 word outline.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is written in the same didactic style as Poosy Paradise, Roosh’s previous book, but because this book is more philosophical and less literary, the tone actually works. The only real weakness is in some of the book’s dialogue: Roosh reveals that it was a number of conversations with friends of his that led him down his current political path, and these sections read like Socratic dialogues instead of discussions between actual human beings. However, given the heady stuff that Roosh discusses in the book, this is forgivable.

The book goes through Roosh’s six stops on his world tour—Berlin, London, Washington, D.C., New York City, Montreal and Toronto—in sequential order, building to the crescendo of what happened to him in Canada. Reading about minor incidents during the first stops (for example, Roosh hired a hostess for the London event that turned out to be a feminist double agent) steadily prepares the reader for the five-alarm fire down the road:

Mark said, “The Bible will help you resolve that. The more that a society goes away from God’s word, the more it will suffer, and so you’ll inevitably see Christianity’s resurgence in some form. It makes sense if you look at how the United States was started by the Pilgrims, who wanted to get away from what they thought was decadent British society. History will repeat itself, and we won’t have long to wait to see it.”

The book’s emotional center is in the Montreal and Toronto chapters, where Roosh details the trials he went through and how he fought back against the angry horde screaming for his head. As someone who was tangentially involved with Roosh’s pushback via Return of Kings and his forum (I couldn’t be more involved because I was dealing with a more serious personal crisis), these chapters shocked even me. Part of me was left wondering how Roosh is even alive after what happened:

After shaking their hands and instructing them to sit down, I said, “We’re going to the venue in teams of four. Only thing I ask is to turn off your phone until 6pm, just in case there is a mole on the list. Make any calls or texts you need to now. From this point on, if you see anyone using their phone, you need to confront them and ask why since everyone will have agreed to turn them off.” Then I made a mistake: I didn’t verify that their phones were turned off.

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, I kept thinking back to the alternative right cucks who spastically smear Roosh as a “rapist” (based on out-of-context book excerpts or a clearly satirical post he wrote) and laughing. It’s easy to talk shit when you’re a 19-year old NEET who’s never gotten your dick wet: when you’ve actually had to pay a physical price for your free speech, you develop a more mature outlook on life.

While I haven’t gone through the hellish ordeal that Roosh has, I’ve had to pay my own price for my free speech. I was physically threatened by #BlackLivesMatter flacks for daring to “infiltrate” their protests; I was booted off of Twitter due to false reports from said flacks; I’ve been doxed and my parents have been harassed by radical leftists, all because I dare to speak my mind and oppose the lies of the day. The wages of honesty used to merely be social exclusion and unemployment; now they include imprisonment, violence and murder.

Unpopular people will always accuse popular people of saying things solely to get attention because it makes them feel better about the fact that nobody cares what they have to say. All writers—indeed, all creators—want attention, it’s just that some people are better at getting it than others, and those people are better at winning hearts and minds than others. This corner of the Internet is as close as you’re going to get to a meritocracy in this world, so don’t hate the player, hate the game.

You may not like some of the things that Roosh and I say, but the reality is that we have skin in the game and you don’t. Until you’ve had to report a stalker to the police or physically disguise yourself to keep leftist thugs from spotting and attacking you, you have no idea of the enormity of the evil we face. This is why whenever some permavirgin with an anime avatar claims I don’t “belong” in the alt-right, I just laugh in his face.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is a punch-to-the-gut reminder of what the forces arrayed against us are capable and willing to do. Carl the Cuck may be an impotent weakling on his own, but he has the media to amplify his voice and the government to back him when the fists fly. We are facing an organized machine that will do anything to maintain its power: lie, cheat, steal and kill. While I’m not half as pessimistic as Roosh is—I believe this is a war we can and will win—his experiences show that we cannot afford to be lazy or apathetic.

My biggest criticism of Free Speech Isn’t Free is the book’s structure. Roosh clearly intended it to be a self-contained volume about his world tour when he began writing it, but roughly a third of the book is dedicated to a lengthy appendix on the Return of Kings tribal meetup outrage that occurred earlier this year. While the book is a riveting read from beginning to end, it would have been stronger if Roosh had rewritten it to better incorporate this story instead of tacking it on.

But this is a minor point. Free Speech Isn’t Free is by far the best book I’ve read this year, and one that you absolutely need in your collection. As hokey as it sounds, freedom isn’t free: we get it by fighting for it. Roosh is fighting for his freedom, I’m fighting for mine, and you need to know how to fight for yours.

Click here to buy Free Speech Isn’t Free.

The Real Right Returns: A Handbook for the True Opposition by Daniel Friberg

The Real Right Returns is one of those books I still recommend despite feeling a little mislead by the title.

A political manifesto-cum-how-to guide from Daniel Friberg, a founder of Arktos and Right On (the latter of which I write for regularly), The Real Right Returns serves as an interesting primer on New Right/alt-right politics as well as a good articulation of first principles. However, the book’s brevity combined with its somewhat scattershot layout limit its effectiveness as a complete work.

Part of the problem with current events-focused books like The Real Right Returns is that they have a short shelf life. The news cycle is like HIV: you can treat it with retrovirals, but it never stops. Best-selling political cheerleader books by Ann Coulter or Michael Savage are worth less than toilet paper six months after publication. You’ll often find them piling up in farmhouse bookstores or in the Amazon “used” section for a penny a piece.

Friberg’s book, while not a straight regurgitation of the headlines (complete with patented solutions), is steeped in the currents of the news cycle. The Real Right Returns opens with a dissection of the situation in Sweden (the book is Europe-focused, seeing as Arktos is based in Europe and Friberg himself is Swedish) and an articulation of what separates the New Right from the old right:

This development is ongoing across Europe, even in notoriously ultra-liberal Sweden. Although Swedes have lagged behind in this regard as a result of the Left’s disproportionately strong grip on our opinion-forming institutions, we are beginning to catch up. New political players have appeared and given renewed courage to those disheartened social critics who, after years of ruthless persecution, are now able to voice their opinions in the fresh air of a new political dawn. Overall, this has created optimal conditions for a broader impact of our ideas—something that is mainly visible in Sweden with the rise of the Sweden Democrats, accompanied by a rapid growth of favourable public opinion towards them.

Friberg writes in the simple, direct fashion of an intelligent man for whom English is a second language: lots of erudition but little flash. While nothing about The Real Right Returns will grab you in an emotional way, the book’s straightforward diction conveys Friberg’s points easily.

The Real Right Returns’ brevity (only 117 pages) prevents it from delving too deep on any one of its subjects, which helps keep the book moving at the cost of leaving me wanting more. While I didn’t expect the book to be a New Right Theory of Everything, Friberg would have done well to go into detail on some of the topics he touches on. For example, his essay “Brief Advice on Gender Roles” is one of the book’s standouts:

Learn basic gentlemanly virtues. This is especially important for those of us who live in the decadent postmodern West, for two reasons: firstly, because these virtues are worth preserving and passing on to coming generations; and secondly, because internalising these virtues will give you a massive competitive advantage over other modern men—spoiled and feminised as they are.

Even adding just a little more detail to these sections would have improved the book immensely. It’s no coincidence that the best portion of The Real Right Returns is its longest: the chapter “Metapolitical Dictionary.” It provides a Mediocracy–style list of definitions of concepts frequently discussed in the alt-right, such as “cultural Marxism” and “political correctness,” and also serves to wrap the book up nicely.

Overall, while The Real Right Returns fails to live up to its subtitle—the book’s short length and somewhat unfocused content make it difficult to call it a “handbook”—it’s still an interesting read. Those who are not as well acquainted with the alternative right will get more out of it than seasoned veterans, however.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Click here to buy The Real Right Returns.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Dr. Karyl McBride

Roosh V Forum member AnonymousBosch has often argued that men can better understand modern women by boning up on personality disorders as opposed to evolutionary psychology. Because Millennials are so damaged as a generation—their hypersensitivity to criticism, lack of social graces, and conditioned narcissism being prime examples—traditional precepts about courtship (as well as a lot of game advice) don’t apply as well as they used to.

It took reading Will I Ever Be Good Enough? for me to fully realize why.

I bought this book because I was trying to solve one of the biggest problems in my life: why I keep ending up with the same kind of women. Ever since I was a teenager, the majority of the girls I’ve been involved with have exhibited similar behavioral patterns: they have poor self-esteem, are needy and clingy, are supine to the point of absurdity, are self-sabotaging, and had histories of being involved with narcissistic men. The degree of their dysfunction varies, from girls who are more or less normal to ones who have what Sam Vaknin describes as “inverted narcissism,” but the same patterns are still there.

Not only that, the girls I’ve met ever since I began writing under my real name have been even more codependent and clingy. It’s tempting to pull an Aaron Clarey and just blame it on general societal decline, but when you keep encountering a specific brand of damaged girls, you’d have to be a fool to ignore the pattern. After comparing notes with a friend of mine who was encountering similarly dysfunctional women, I started researching the issue more thoroughly.

However, it took my stenographer Eve Penman’s guest post on narcissistic mothers before it all finally clicked. In the post, Eve details her experience dealing with her mother’s abuse, how it warped her self-image and self-esteem, and how she’s coping with it as an adult. When Eve initially offered to write the post for my site, I had an epiphany: the majority of the girls I knew (and my friend knew) all preferred their fathers to their mothers, either because they were straight-up daddies’ girls or because their mothers were openly abusive.

While I don’t want to go full Stefan Molyneux and claim that child abuse is the root of all evil, it was clear I was one puzzle piece closer to solving the mystery.

One of the primary sources Eve listed in her post was Dr. Karyl McBride’s book, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, which I snapped up almost immediately. While the book isn’t targeted at my demographic, I was hoping to better understand the kinds of women in my life, as well as reverse-engineer their minds so I could predict their future behavior.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is an absolute must-read not only for women who’ve had to deal with abuse from narcissistic mothers, but the men who have to deal with those women. The book lays out the mindset of women who’ve suffered from maternal abuse in such a clear-cut fashion that reading it was an intensely depressing experience. However, McBride’s book also lays out steps that these women can use to rebuild their self-images and live happy, successful lives.

And if you’re a man, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? will help you understand where these women are coming from and how to predict the ways they’ll act.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is separated into three parts: identifying narcissistic mothering, explaining how it ruins a woman’s life, and advice on overcoming parental-induced dysfunction. A therapist by trade, McBride was spurred to write the book after noticing that the bulk of her female patients had one thing in common: a narcissistic mother. McBride herself grew up with a narcissistic mother, but was able to overcome her origins and get her life together, lending her advice additional credibility:

A narcissistic mother sees her daughter, more than her son, as a reflection and extension of herself rather than as a separate person with her own identity. She puts pressure on her daughter to act and react to the world and her surroundings in the exact manner that Mom would, rather than in a way that feels right for the daughter. Thus, the daughter is always scrambling to find the “right” way to respond to her mother in order to win her love and approval. The daughter doesn’t realize that the behaviors that will please her mother are entirely arbitrary, determined only by her mother’s self-seeking concern. Most damaging is that a narcissistic mother never approves of her daughter simply for being herself, which the daughter desperately needs in order to grow into a confident woman.

Narcissistic mothering is a problem for girls not only because it’s a violation of the bond between parent and child, but because girls rely on their mothers to provide a model for how they should act. By treating their daughters as extensions of themselves instead of separate human beings, narcissistic mothers deny them the ability to form their own identities. Sons of narcissistic mothers also suffer different but related forms of abuse; I haven’t read any books that focus on this subject, but this site recommended by Eve Penman looks like a good place to start.

I’ve written extensively about narcissism in the past, so I don’t need to rehash the basics, but it’s worth looking into narcissistic parenting. Narcissists have children out of a desire to feed their own ego and have someone else to push around. It’s a more malignant manifestation of the phenomenon of poor black and white teenage girls choosing to get pregnant (despite knowing about and having access to birth control) because they want to have power over someone else:

Mary sadly reported, “Mom tells me I’m ugly, but then I am supposed to go out there and be drop-dead gorgeous! I was a homecoming queen candidate and Mom acted proud with her friends but punished me. There’s this crazy-making message: The real me is ugly, but I am supposed to fake it in the real world? I still don’t get it.”

Narcissistic mothers constantly work to tear down any attempts their children make to develop a unique identity. They do this by belittling their children, by demanding constant attention, by violating boundaries (one of McBride’s patients talked about how her mother would try to sleep with her boyfriends), and a variety of other tactics. Some narcissists will even fake illness or injury in order to get attention.

The daughter reacts to her mother’s manipulations by constantly trying to please her and never quite succeeding. Dealing with a narcissist is like living in the world of Kafka’s Trial, in which a man is arrested and thrown in prison for a crime that he is never told about, by an authority that he doesn’t understand and which never reveals its motivations. If you’re particularly vulnerable to a narcissist’s predations, entering their reality is like being trapped in a house of mirrors, and there’s no one more vulnerable than children:

Oftentimes when Mother is narcissistic, she may be able to do some of the earlier nurturing because she has control of the infant and small child and can mold the child to her wishes. But as the child grows older and develops a mind of her own, the mother loses control and no longer has the same kind of power. This causes the mother to begin her demeaning, critical behavior with the child, in hopes of regaining that control, which is crazy-making for the daughter. Even if she learned a modicum of trust as an infant, she begins to unlearn it as she grows older. As she makes natural, reasonable demands on her mother, who is unable to meet them, the mother becomes resentful and threatened, and projects her inadequacies onto the daughter. She begins to focus on the daughter’s failings, rather than on her own limited ability to parent effectively.

What kind of woman does maternal narcissism create? That’s where things get really interesting.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? lays out two extremes that the daughters of narcissistic mothers gravitate towards: the High-Achieving Daughter and the Self-Sabotaging Daughter. The High-Achieving Daughter overcompensates for her inner pain by throwing herself into her career or work, obsessing over external validation. The Self-Sabotaging Daughter is the exact opposite, constantly screwing up her life through self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse:

While it is common to find the high achievers living in nice homes and working in well-paid careers or professions, it is just as common to find the self-saboteurs living in an aunt’s basement, in prison, on welfare, and collecting unemployment checks. When children are not allowed to be dependent on their mothers, they search for substitute caretakers as they get older. They attempt to get friends, relatives, lovers, partners, even society to take care of them so that they can finally feel cared for and secure. This may be a way to fool themselves into believing that because they are being cared for, they are finally being loved or cared about. Yet they never really feel cared about.

Reading this was like a punch to the gut. If you’re in a relationship with a Self-Sabotaging Daughter, your life will be constant misery. They instigate constant drama, they abuse drugs and alcohol, they threaten and attempt suicide; they do everything in their power to infect you with their unhappiness. And as McBride discusses in her chapter on the kinds of men that daughters of narcissistic mothers end up, they gravitate towards those who will abuse them the same way their moms did:

Many times the adult daughter will choose a partner who can’t meet even reasonable emotional needs because she unconsciously wants someone who cannot be emotionally intimate or vulnerable. This is what is familiar to her and what she feels is safe and predictable. Until she enters recovery, she is not especially in touch with her own feelings and therefore needs to partner with someone who is not “into” the feelings realm either.

The narcissist and the codependent form a feedback loop of pain. Narcissists seek out prey to provide them with narcissistic supply; codependents offer themselves as prey. If you don’t treat a codependent in the predatory fashion that she expects, she’ll drive you to abuse her through her antics (much in the same way that BPD women will push their boyfriends/husbands to batter them) and reject you if you don’t conform.

I realized that a big reason why these types of girls are attracted to me is because I give off narcissist vibes. However, I’m not a narcissist; I’m egomaniacal, though it’s easy to confuse the two. Because I’m incapable/unwilling to give these women the emotional roller coaster they expect, they eventually get bored and try to detonate the relationship. This is not to claim that I’m some kind of angel; I’ve done horrible things to women in the past, some of them unforgivable.

But at the end of the day, the only thing that can satisfy a codependent is a narcissist.

Can the daughters of narcissistic mothers be healed? Will I Ever Be Good Enough? says yes, but McBride also stresses that healing will only begin when the women themselves want it. As I learned a long time ago, trying to get people to mend their ways on your own never works; they have to want to change of their own volition. Trying to save women who don’t want to save themselves will always be a losing proposition.

There’s no point in helping people who insist on being self-destructive.

Overall, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers is one of the most eye-opening books I’ve read all year. If you’re a woman suffering from maternal abuse, you need to read it, because no other psychology book will so thoroughly explain your plight and how to undo it. If you’re a man who is close to a woman who’s suffering from maternal abuse, you need to read it, because it will give you a roadmap to her mind.

Narcissism is one of the greatest maladies of our time. We need to fight it in any way we can.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Naughty Nomad’s Guide to New York by Mark Zolo

Naughty Nomad’s Guide to New York is by far the most detailed guide on getting laid in a particular city I’ve ever read.

Most of the city/country guides I’ve read, such as Roosh’s various Bang books, stick to a general overview of the country or city in question and what its girls are like. This makes sense: it’s impossible to uncover every nuance of a country with millions of people in it. But roughly half of Mark Zolo’s book is dedicated to specific breakdowns of nightlife in NYC’s various neighborhoods, with detailed description of bars, the types of girls you can find in them, and everything else.

I can almost visualize Zolo’s liver begging for a respite from the metric tons of booze he guzzled while doing research.

If you’re interested in picking up girls in New York—probably one of the few places left in the U.S. where you can pick up girls without having to deal with massive amounts of autism and social justice—Naughty Nomad’s Guide is an obvious must-buy. Zolo could have easily released a more generic book that was half the length of this one and still make money, but the sheer amount of detail in Naughty Nomad’s Guide makes it invaluable. (Full disclosure: Zolo hired me to edit the book.)

One of the things I took away from Naughty Nomad’s Guide is the sheer logistical clusterfuck of getting in, out and living in New York City. Seeing as I grew up upstate, NYC was just a short train or bus ride away for me, so I never really thought about the massive headache that visiting the city entails for anyone who doesn’t live in the Northeast. Zolo details how you can travel to New York and not get completely reamed on accommodation:

In Upper Manhattan, especially in Harlem, there are numerous brokers that offer cheap weekly room rentals (usually for Hispanic migrants). There’s an advance on the broker’s fee to the tune of $150, and you’ll also have to stump one week’s security (which you’ll eventually get back), but the good news is the rooms are only about $150-$200 a week, payable weekly, and all you need is a valid ID. So, for less than $500, you’re in the door and have your own bed. Compare this with a typical lease requiring you to jump through hoops, sign contracts, and provide three to four months upfront. This typically adds up to thousands of dollars… and you still have to buy a bed to sleep on!

Naughty Nomad’s Guide also provides a helpful breakdown of the different types and ethnicities of women in the city as well as the game you need to shag them. Do you like Chinese girls, Latinas or preppy college twats? New York City is the world’s greatest smorgasbord of snatch:

You’ll see her in clubs and lounges, usually with a loud-mouthed cohort hollering in Ebonics and dropping the N-word incessantly, displaying about as much class as that of an Afghan schoolgirl under Taliban rule. She may not be very sophisticated, but her excessive confidence, thick buttocks, ostentatious dress and trashy tattoos all hold a certain, stripper-esque sex appeal that still makes you want to nail her ghetto ass.

But the true centerpiece of Naughty Nomad’s Guide is the nightlife section. As I mentioned already, much of the book is dedicated to Zolo’s first-hand research of NYC’s best watering holes. I was pleasantly surprised to see a few of my favorite spots on his list, showing the depth and extensiveness of his work:

If you’re in the city, I recommend you start in Chinatown. Fill up on cheap beer and oriental grub around Mott Street and then enjoy a cocktail and some chill live music at speakeasy Apotheke. After there, take a 10-minute walk up to GoldBar for hip-hop and high heels (free in, but it’s hit or miss). If you want to split up the journey, there’s an optional stop-off in the Mulberry Project in Little Italy (it will be completely dead, but it’s another hidden another speakeasy). Better yet, skip GoldBar and go to Pianos in LES.

If there’s one problem with Naughty Nomad’s Guide, it’s that it assumes you have a certain level of game proficiency. While I don’t expect every book like this to reinvent the wheel, given how unforgiving New York’s singles scene is, you’re only going to get value out of the book if you’ve already honed your skills to a certain level. New York City is not for newbies.

Additionally, given the book’s focus on venues, it’s questionable how valuable Zolo’s guide will be two, three or four years down the line. While many of the bars and spots listed in Naughty Nomad’s Guide have been around for a while, given how trends change, the book will likely become progressively outdated as it gets older.

Overall though, if you live in NYC or are planning a visit, Naughty Nomad’s Guide to New York City is a book you can’t afford not to read. There is simply no other resource that can help you find poosy paradise in the Big Apple so easily.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Click here to buy Naughty Nomad’s Guide to New York City.

Read Next: The Gringo Trail by Mark Mann

Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich

Gorilla Mindset is one of the most life-changing books you can buy.

Not wholly, not completely. Mike Cernovich’s handbook on self-improvement and personal psychology cribs from a number of different sources, most notably Dr. Shad Helmstetter’s classic study on self-esteem, What to Say When You Talk to Your Self. But what distinguishes Gorilla Mindset from its predecessors is both its breadth of data and the personal experience that Cernovich brings to the table.

It’s this comprehensive approach that makes Gorilla Mindset a must-buy.

Gorilla Mindset succeeds because Cernovich approaches self-mastery from the very foundation of identity: mindset. The thin red line connecting most self-help gurus, from generic Tim Ferriss clones to pick-up artists, is that their programs are based on faking it until you make it: changing your behavior and hoping that it alters your personality in the process. Gorilla Mindset turns this on its head by having you adopt a mindset of confidence, from which success flows:

No one taught us how to talk to ourselves. It happened through osmosis. We silently repeated the same speaking patterns, words and phrases to ourselves that others had spoken to us out loud. You could spend hundreds of hours on a therapist’s couch analyzing where you learned how to talk to yourself. But where you learned it is not the question you need to answer. Gorilla Mindset is not about blaming your parents, teachers, or other loved ones or authority figures. This is a book about taking action.

I can attest to the power of the self-talk techniques that Cernovich and Helmstetter advocate. Two years ago, my friend Zampano introduced me to What to Say When You Talk to Your Self. While the idea of recording positive affirmations—i.e. “Today, I will do five Turkish get-ups” or “Today, I will approach ten girls”—and listening to them every morning sounds hokey, it really works.

Self-talk works because it simultaneously provides positive encouragement while purging negative habits and thoughts from your mind. Only you can change yourself; while other people can give you direction and motivation, the spark for transformation can only come from within. At the same time, merely thinking about changing yourself doesn’t work.

Much in the same way that writing down a goal makes you more likely to achieve it, recording your goals and dreams in your own voice—and listening back to them—makes you more likely to follow through.

At the time I first discovered Helmstetter’s book, I was in a fairly low period of my life, stuck in a dead-end job in a city I hated with little prospect of escape. While I was making a fair chunk of change off my blog and books, it wasn’t enough to live off of. I was stalled on multiple book projects and going nowhere fast.

As an experiment, I began recording positive affirmations geared towards giving myself a kick in the ass. Within a week of hearing my own voice shouting at me like a boot camp instructor, I started changing my habits. Instead of loafing off after work, I started working again:

I released two books in the span of three months.
I re-released my previous books, with better editing and flashier cover art.
I overhauled the design of my blog to attract more readers.
I created my own online bookstore.
I started a new mailing list.

The result of all this? I was able to quit my job and become a full-time writer seven months later.

Cultivating a healthy mindset also helped carry me through several major crises. It was around the time I read What to Say When You Talk to Your Self that my article “The Case Against Female Self-Esteem” went viral. For three months after I published that post, my email inbox and social media accounts were a flood of death threats and hate from triggered feminists. I was denounced by everyone from Daily Kos to the Huffington Post.

Meanwhile, my traffic grew exponentially: I got over one million hits in October 2013 alone and got so much traffic one day that my hosting provider had to disable my account.

It would have been easy to wilt in the face of public opposition, to apologize for my views, pull the article or whatever, especially considering that this was around the time that public figures like Pax Dickinson were being roasted alive for un-PC statements. But I stood firm and didn’t back down, mocking my haters and refusing to kow-tow to their temper tantrums. In fact, when I visited New York City during the height of the shitstorm, I actively Tweeted out my location much of the time, making it easier for my enemies to stalk me.

What happened? Nothing.

I was able to stand up to so much public pressure because I was using what Cernovich refers to as “gorilla mindset” techniques. I taught myself that the collective shitfit feminists were throwing didn’t matter. They couldn’t get me fired from my job, arrested for “hate speech,” or even killed. In fact, the public anger over my article on female self-esteem was part of what helped me become financially independent off my writing.

I’ve weathered similar crises—and come out stronger—largely because of the power of self-talk. When hordes of tattooed sluts descended upon me, infuriated at my Return of Kings article on girls with tattoos and piercings, I flipped ’em the bird and laughed. When a jilted male feminist tried to instigate an SJW lynch mob to falsely accuse me of rape (while pressuring his girlfriend—one of my best friends—to go to the police and accuse me), gorilla mindset techniques saved me from having a nervous breakdown.

Gorilla Mindset isn’t simply a clap-happy self-improvement book: Cernovich’s advice can save your life.

Aiding Cernovich’s introductory chapters on self-talk is a wealth of information on health and lifestyle. In contrast to Helmstetter’s laser-like approach to self-esteem, Gorilla Mindset provides a comprehensive, holistic plan on transforming your life. Taking Cernovich’s advice on posture, supplements and other aspects of your life ensures that the gorilla mindset will become a permanent fixture of your personality:

Practicing such body language and mindset can result in them being chronically activated. Therefore, rather than getting a temporary increase from a workout or a victory, such exercises may allow for regulation of testosterone over a longer time frame. After all, the research I discussed in the science of posture and testosterone article, about changes in testosterone levels in men during marriage and divorce, seems to indicate longer-term effects on testosterone due to psychological and social changes (Mazur & Booth, 1998).

Cernovich also backs up much of his writing with citations showing that his advice is scientifically sound.

While it may sound hagiographic to say this, you can’t afford not to buy Gorilla Mindset. Self-talk has had such an huge impact on my life that it’s virtually impossible to imagine where I’d be without it. If you’re sick of pop psychology and generic self-help fluff, Cernovich’s book holds the key to unlocking your full potential as a man. Gorilla Mindset is easily one of the most important books released in 2015 and a must-add to your collection.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Click here to buy Gorilla Mindset.

Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero (Translated by Quintus Curtius)

Quintus Curtius’ translation of Stoic Paradoxes manages to accomplish something that few books do: make a complex philosophy accessible to the average man.

People know about Stoicism in the loosest sense as a philosophy that encourages men to reign in destructive emotions and become resilient as a means of dealing with life’s challenges. Hell, “stoic” entered the English language as a word describing those who can endure hardship or tribulations without whining or breaking under stress. But as with all philosophical concepts borrowed from other peoples, Stoicism is much deeper than the popular imagination conceives it to be.

But how do you learn about Stoicism—or any philosophy, for that matter—without drowning in awkward translations or bad scholarship?

Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero is the perfect place to start. This new translation by Return of Kings contributor Quintus Curtius presents one of the classic texts of Stoicism in an easy to understand way. If you’re looking for a stimulating read that will turn your worldview on its head, Stoic Paradoxes is worth the money.

But this begs the question: why do we need a new translation of this work? Stoic Paradoxes has been translated into English before. Curtius explains in his intro, which also does an excellent job of summarizing both Stoicism and the value of Cicero’s work:

Translators are often known to complain about the dilemmas they face in rendering the thoughts and words of a writer from one language into another. The reader may be assured that this dilemma is very real. For the conscientious translator, there is a constant tension between faithfulness to the original text and readability in the target language. If the translator emphasizes too literal a rendering of his text, he risks producing something clumsy or opaque in the target language; but if he emphasizes a looser, “freer” rendering of the text, he risks producing something that departs too far from the original. So one must strike a balance between fidelity to the original text, and unambiguouscomprehension in English. The success or failure of a translation is based on this balance.

I’m far from fluent in ancient languages, but I’d say that Curtius nailed it with his approach. The main text of Stoic Paradoxes flows as smoothly as Coke down the chin of a fat kid, conveying Cicero’s ideas in concise yet intelligent language. To paraphrase a quote Chip Smith used about my friend Ann Sterzinger’s translation of Octave Mirbeau’s In the Sky, I expected the book to read like Curtius, but instead it reads like Cicero.

Further adding to this edition of Stoic Paradoxes is the extensive scholarship that Curtius has included alongside it. He doesn’t simply regurgitate Cicero’s words in a modern language; he includes several introductory chapters on his life and works as well as an extensive series of endnotes for those interested in studying further. Curtius’ efforts do an excellent job of easing the reader into the currents of Cicero’s thoughts:

He found himself back in Rome after his sojourn in Greece, and from that point devoted himself completely to law and politics. At the age of thirty he married his wife Terentia, a woman of likely patrician stock who provided Cicero the financial boost and connections needed to be a competitor in Roman politics. He enjoyed many years of domestic felicity with her, but financial troubles brought on by Cicero’s political tribulations ultimately doomed their marriage, and they divorced in 46. But that heartache was for the future. Beginning in 75, he had many years of successes, including being elected to several offices at the earliest age that candidacy was possible. First came a successful quaestorship in Sicily; when this ended he was hired by several Sicilian municipalities to prosecute a corrupt official named Caius Verres.

The main text of Stoic Paradoxes comprises about half of the book’s total length; while you can blast through the whole thing in about a day, Cicero’s words require careful study. What strikes me about Cicero’s presentation of Stoicism is how alien it is to modern sensibilities.

I don’t mean that Stoicism is difficult to understand; I mean it runs counter to how people today are expected to act.

In the modern West, men and women are expected to give in to their emotions at all times, to whine about their problems, and to turn molehills into mountains. Microaggressions, trigger warnings, and social justice witch hunts are the products of unrestrained emotion. Indeed, people in general—and women specifically—are so consumed by emotion that they’re starting to lash out in violence in order to further their left-wing agendas.

Mankind is devolving into a race of giant babies, constantly on the prowl for something new to be offended by.

Stoicism stands against the maelstrom of emotion and the arrogance of atheist materialism by teaching that the way to inner peace is through restraint. Only by curbing your worst instincts and living in harmony with nature can you become the best man you can be. Cicero argues for Stoicism with passion and logic, citing examples of how unrestrained emotion leads men to grisly ends:

Did these men think the only things worth pursuing in life were those things shallowly praiseworthy or appealing? Let those who mock this argument and judgment come now, and decide whether they prefer to resemble those who live in gleaming houses of marble, ebony, and gold, who have statutes, pictures, and embossed gold and silver ornaments, and Corinthian artworks; or if, rather, they prefer to be like Caius Fabricius, who neither had these things nor wanted them.

While it’s certainly possible to argue that Cicero goes too far in one direction, you can’t deny that our world could use some stiff upper lip. Stoic Paradoxes is a concise handbook for unlearning the mental pathologies that society forces upon you.

If I were to criticize Stoic Paradoxes for anything, it would be the inclusion of Cicero’s essay “Dream of Scipio.” It’s not part of Cicero’s original text; Curtius included it because it forms a “nice balance” with Stoic Paradoxes. While it’s certainly an interesting work, it clashes stylistically with the other essays in the book and feels out of place.

This is really a minor point, though. As a translation and a philosophical work, Stoic Paradoxes truly is a must-read for men. If you’re seeking masculine enlightenment and a counterpoint to mainstream society, Curtius’ book will kick your ass down the right path.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Click here to buy Stoic Paradoxes.

A Date on Campus: Jackie’s First Frat Party by Emily Roberts

NOTE: I originally meant to publish this review at Return of Kings a few months ago, but I shelved it due to lack of time. In the time between when I first started writing the article and now, A Date on Campus was removed from Amazon for unknown reasons. I hope the author puts it back up, but until then, here’s my review.

As a popular writer who regularly posts on books, I’m generally awash in review copies of stuff. Everyone and their mother sends me a copy of their manifesto, novel, or totally-original-guide-on-how-to-lift-and-pick-up-chicks at some point, hoping I’ll give them the thumbs up… or actually review the damn thing. At any given time, I’m absolutely drowning in review copies, to the point where they’re crowding out the stuff that I actually want to read.

And then there’s the rare book that gets to jump the queue and pique my interest.

Some time ago, I received an email from an “Emily Roberts” with the subject line “UVA/Rolling Stone erotica.” I immediately opened it up and read this:

“Virginia Robinson” inspired me. Enjoy the book ;)

“Virginia Robinson” refers to how I trolled the manosphere last year under the identity of the same-named submissive Christian housewife and aspiring erotica novelist. I clicked the attached link and received my free copy of A Date on Campus: Jackie’s First Frat Party, described as “a steamy re-imagining of the infamous UVA frat exposé in Rolling Stone magazine.”

Oh shit…

I was expecting A Date on Campus to be similar to Roughed Up by #GamerGape, another recent erotica title based off of real-life events, in this case the rampant cheating of game industry darling Zoe Quinn. I reviewed Roughed Up by #GamerGape for Reaxxion back in January, finding it weakly written and about as “offensive” as a Cinemax softcore flick (Quinn and her lackeys had the book pulled from Amazon for being “threatening” or something equally stupid).

While both #GamerGape and A Date on Campus are “ripped from today’s headlines” (as the marketers might put it), that’s where the similarities end. While A Date on Campus has an obvious parodic undertone, the book is not only serious as an erotica title, but is much more skillfully written. A Date on Campus is a fictionalized depiction of the now-discredited story Sabrina Rubin Erdely fabricated for her article “A Rape on Campus,” sans the actual rape:

Jackie sat still as a mouse, soaking in the discussion. Over the summer, she had dumped her high school boyfriend. He was handsome enough, but also a little nerdy and insecure. Initially, she had been attracted to his intelligent, bookish nature, but she had always felt, deep down, that he wasn’t quite in her league. Whenever an athlete or other high school alpha male made a pass at her, she inwardly seethed with frustration that she was tied down with her boring boyfriend. She used her move to Charlottesville as an excuse to break up with him. “Since we’ll be so far apart, maybe we should start seeing other people,” she had said to her devastated boyfriend, knowing full well that it would be much easier for her to “see other people” than it would be for him.

The plot follows the nondescript college freshman Jackie, who arrives at the University of Virginia newly single and ready to mingle. Unfortunately, despite being away from her family, surrounded by throngs of horny young men—and having a raging slut for a roommate—poor Jackie just can’t get a date. That is, until she becomes acquainted with one Drew Monahan, a hunky lifeguard who draws her eye… and gives her a means to live out her forbidden fantasies:

But most frequently, Jackie would imagine an attractive guy, driven wild by desire, taking her by force. In these dubious consent fantasies, it was never the guy himself she objected to, but the place and time. “I can’t wait any longer,” the man would whisper menacingly in her ear as he pulled her unwillingly into a public restroom or an empty classroom. “STOP! Not here! Someone will see us!” she would protest futilely as he roughly yanked her bra off and pulled down her pants. Once she was naked—dangerously exposed to anyone who might stumble in on them—she would give in and passionately fuck the guy, orgasming intensely at the thrilling risk of discovery.

The writing in A Date on Campus, while not award-winning, is actually pretty good and does its job in getting the reader all hot and bothered. Roberts’ main folly is that she occasionally slips into overly clinical terminology to describe sex acts, akin to a more talented E.L. James. While it isn’t too bad in many cases (such as in the above excerpts), some of the segments lose steam due to Roberts narrating them like she’s a nurse trying to figure out how a free clinic patient got a dildo wedged up his ass:

Jackie remembered that her ex-boyfriend liked her to massage his epididymis tubes with her tongue when she gave him blowjobs. Jackie released Drew’s dick and started sucking his balls instead. With her tongue, she vigorously stroked the semen ducts at the back of Drew’s testicles.

Call me cynical, but I have a hard time believing that the average teenage girl could even pronounce “epididymis.”

Where A Date on Campus really shined for me—someone who has no interest in reading erotica—is the ending. The book is effectively alternate history (or, if you want to get technical, actual history, as opposed to the mainstream media’s narrative about the UVA rape hoax), resembling a smuttier, less literary version of Andy Nowicki’s Heart Killer (no, I’m not joking).

Without spoiling anything, Roberts’ explanation for Jackie’s booze-soaked gangbang is both amusing and a depressing commentary on modern America.

While A Date on Campus is not exactly the kind of book you run to go buy, I recommend it as both a way to get off (if you’re into that kind of thing) and a smartly written reinterpretation of one of the biggest hoaxes of recent years. Emily Roberts’ erotic novella isn’t just better written than “A Rape on Campus,” it’s infinitely more believable. Forget The Onion: we get more honesty from porn these days than from the media.

Click here to buy A Date on Campus: Jackie’s First Frat Party.