Midmen: The Modern Man’s Guide to Surviving Midlife Crisis
Steve Ochs
File Size: 2674 KB
Print Length: 221 pages
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00TYNSCTU
A well-researched book, Midmen is filled with very useful information for men who are facing the myriad of challenges that come with middle age: job loss, physical limitations, children pushing every envelope, broken relationships, and all the other things that can send a man spiraling down a path toward depression.
In addition. It is funny as hell. I highly suggest you read the entire book, including the parts that many readers skip, the Foreward and the Preface. They both establish the fact that you will laugh your way through the book, while gleaning the important information on how to cope with all those miserable challenges.
In one of the later chapters, Ochs addresses the fact that men, and women too, although he doesn’t say that, adapt to what they think society expects of them. So they are the dutiful husband, well, most of the time, the dedicated employee, again, most of the time, and the good buddy. That might be the easiest to achieve. Anyway, Ochs encourages men to be themselves, and “Being yourself is, in and of itself, doing something that matters to you. If ‘yourself’ happens to be a Bernie Maddoff or worse, a K.C. of the Sunshine Band variety, you may want to keep your worst traits unindulged, but you still have to acknowledge and serve them somehow.”
One of the main points of the book, and probably the reason Ochs decided to write it, is that it is in middle age when most of us start looking our mortality head on in the mirror every day. When we’re young, we’re sure we’re immortal, but that surety is weakened when we start sliding toward mortality. This book encourages, inspires, and offers help for living the second half of our lives to the fullest. I highly recommend it, not just for Midmen, but for the women, or other partners, of men who are caught up in the swirl of midlife challenges.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Ochs, GED, rose from a teenage felon to a respected stand up comic/TV writer/producer with credits spanning from network TV to HBO and Showtime. You might recognize him as a comic from his appearances on Star Search (on one show beating Martin Lawrence… whatever happened to that guy?) or as a writer from his credits on the multi Emmy-winning Rugrats.
He returned to the stage in 2011 with a one man show called “Life in the Middle Ages,” which was named Best of the Hollywood Fringe and inspired MIDMEN and which is itself being adapted into another one man show.
Ochs is a principal at
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