Product Description

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . .

•How do people in wheelchairs have sex?

•Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast?

•Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever?

•Why does asparagus make my pee smell?

•Why do old people grow hair on their ears?

•Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true?

. . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you.

Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers real factual and really funny answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9433 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-26
• Released on: 2005-07-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Download Description
Mark Leyner is the author of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog; I Smell Esther Williams; Et Tu Babe; and The Tetherballs of Bougainville. He has written scripts for a variety of films and television shows. His writing appears regularly in The New Yorker, Time, and GQ.

Billy Goldberg, M.D., is an emergency medicine physician on faculty at a New York City teaching hospital. He is also a writer and artist whose paintings have been exhibited in New York City.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Urban legends and perennial wonders get a witty treatment in this lighthearted guide to largely inconsequential yet intriguing aspects of the human body. Leyner, a novelist whose writing appears regularly in the New Yorker and GQ, and New York physician Goldberg address food and the body (does coffee stunt your growth?), "body oddities" (what are goose bumps?), folk remedies (does breast milk cure warts?), drugs (does marijuana help glaucoma?), bathroom humor (why can you ignite a fart?), medical media (is the show ER accurate?), old wives tales (can lip balm be addictive?) and aging (why do old ladies grow beards?). And then there's the sex chapter-definitely the one where the subtitle is most applicable, with questions like "can people in wheelchairs still have sex?" and "do the kind of underpants men wear affect their fertility?" The book includes e-mail interactions between the authors, which are sometimes funny. Some of the authors' answers are unsatisfactory and, as a whole, this is much more of a humor book than a health one. The truly curious will find better, more in-depth answers on medical Web sites, but those looking for a good laugh will have some fun with this book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
This book . . . collection . . . performance . . . is strange, funny, occasionally perverse, and even, at times, informative. Some of the strangeness comes from Mark Leyner being both narrator and co-author, and therefore getting to narrate in lurid detail his own activities at a party one hopes was fictional. More of its strangeness comes from the questions asked and the trills the two men put on the factual responses. Leyner's delivery is always clear and professional. He often sounds on the verge of laughter, and the presence of such open amusement helps carry listeners over into laughter. As a result, this is probably better on audio than in print. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

This book was a disappointment
I had high hopes for this book--it promised to answer some nifty little trivia questions we might think of at odd moments, such as the title question. It does have some good answers to some good questions, and is accessibly written.

That said, it has disappointing answers to some questions too, such as what happens when you hold in intestinal gas. Rather than explaining that it's reabsorbed into the lower intestine and then... (or whatever does happen to the gas), they say it just goes away. So I still don't know what happens to it.

Even more disappointing is that the content-to-filler ratio is surprisingly low. The questions are interspersed with long descriptions of the authors at social get-togethers, with little explanation of its relevance to the book, and transcripts of IM sessions between the authors, chatting about the book they're writing, which don't add any useful content.

The book could have probably been improved by removing half of it and focusing better on the weak answers.

Great Title...So-So Book
You know...I got this book because I saw more than a few rave reviews of it on the 50 Book Challenge community...and boy am I glad that I got this from the library and didn't pay for it or use up a book credit on PBS. For the most part, I knew the answers to the questions already. For the ones I would have been interested in knowing more about, the answers were of the "no one really knows" variety and the remaining few were just not really answered, the question was avoided totally with some humor and they moved on quite quickly.

It has a few laugh out loud moments, but mostly it wasn't at all what the title promises it to be. The questions and answers, while humorously asked and answered are not REALLY answered in most cases or the answers are extremely vague to the point of being inane and useless. It wasn't an awful read...but if it had taken more than a couple of hours to read this, I'd be pissed...it's shallow, vague and utterly obvious that the editor/publisher did a pretty slick job with the title and cover, because those are about the most enticing things about Why do Men Have Nipples? I wouldn't recommend it, except maybe as a quick, slightly amusing read...it's not REALLY going to answer any of those questions that you've got wandering around in the back of your head...and the one's it does, you probably already know the answer to or there is no answer. This book is annoying in the way that those Discover Channel specials that claim to tell you the secret of the Bog People or some other such unknowable thing...when all they are really doing is presenting all the evidence and then telling you no on REALLY knows...I hate that. The title of the book (like the title of these types of programs) promise one thing, but deliver something significantly different...interesting and informative (or entertaining...and sometimes all three), but not really delivering what was promised. C-

entertaining fluff
Fluffily entertaining. Best to read waiting in line to buy a book with more meat on it.