Be a Man: How I Spent One Year Drinking, Shaving, Farming, and Fathering My Way Toward Masculinity

My name is Peter Andre, and I'm not a man. I take gummy vitamins. I require Band-Aids for paper cuts. I’ve been called petite in mixed company.


When Peter wed the love of his life, he assumed he would cross two thresholds at once: marriage and manhood. But months after he exchanged vows, Peter is the same passive-aggressive man-child he has always been. He can barely hammer a nail, keeps mum when people cut in line, and whines when he loses board games.


It's time for a change.


His plan? Complete a different manly activity every week for an entire year. Along the way, Peter attempts to validate his manliness by:

Trying Scotch for the first time
Learning how to defend himself
Going and subsequently hating camping
Losing a battle of wits with a CPR dummy
Playing home run derby with an eight-year-old
Shooting a handgun at NRA headquarters
Picking up lots of dog doo
Bombing onstage at a stand-up open mic night
Getting hopelessly lost in a public park
Experiencing loss-of-technology withdrawals
Becoming a dad—sort of
...and many more manly endeavors

He may not always succeed in these weekly challenges—or even mostly succeed—but through the course of living the masculine life, Peter will find out that being a man in today's world is nothing like he imagined it would be.