Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck

We live in a world that’s very different from the one in which Emily Post came of age. Many of us who are nice (but, who also sometimes say "f*ck") are frequently at a loss for guidelines about how to be a good person who deals effectively with the increasing onslaught of rudeness we all encounter. To lead us out of the miasma of modern mannerlessness, science-based and bitingly funny syndicated columnist Amy Alkon—The Advice Goddess—rips the doily off the manners genre and gives us a new set of behavioral standards for our 21st century lives.

Alkon explains that we are experiencing so much rudeness because we now live in societies too big for our brains. We’ve lost the constraints on bad behavior that we would have had in the small bands we evolved in, where we were almost always around people we knew. With her trademark irreverent humor, Alkon shows us how we can reimpose those constraints and transforms findings from research into fun-to-read, practical advice on how not to be one of the rude and how to stand up to those who are. Forgoing prissy advice on which utensil to use, Alkon answers 21st century manners questions, including:

‧ Why do many people, especially those under 40, now find spontaneous phone calls rude?

‧ What can you tape to your mailbox to stop passing dog walkers from letting their pooch violate your lawn?

‧ How do you shut up the guy in the pharmacy line with his cellphone on speaker?

‧ When a traffic cop stops you, where do you draw the line between politeness and self-incrimination?

‧ When should you console somebody who’s crying in public, and when should you leave them alone?

‧ What small gift to your brand-new neighbors might make them think twice about playing Metallica at 3 am?

Combining science with more than a touch of humor, Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say "F*ck" is destined to give good old Emily a shove off the etiquette shelf (if that's not too rude to say).

AMY ALKON writes The Advice Goddess, an award-winning, syndicated column that runs in more than 100 newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. She is also the author of I See Rude People. She has been on Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MTV, and Entertainment Tonight and has a weekly radio show called Advice Goddess Radio. She has also written for Psychology Today, the LA Times, the LA Times Magazine, New York Daily News and Pravda, among others. She lives in Venice, California.