You didn’t know?
I fondly remember that book when it first came out. I read it so many times it’s pages came out. I was 7 years old and it was thrilling reading.
But as far as accuracy, I’d say it about as accurate as that other great 1960’s book, “Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask”.
Does it still have the entry on what to do when encountering aliens stepping from a flying saucer?
All jokes aside, I will say that while reading it late at night was scary and fun, it also gave me a certain confidence when I was confronted in real life with somewhat less severe situations. The fact that I’d read so much about the worst-case-scenario made my little mishaps seem rather mediocre. So if the author’s intent was to help us eliminate fear from paralysing us, I’d say it worked with me.
They do if their stealing a quick nap!
From one of the reader reviews.
So that’s what hung him up, eh? Anybody else reminded of Twain’s “A Double-Barreled Detective Story?”
Not much, with a [del]five[/del] four finger discount.
“Anthony Greenbank” is the literary pseudonym of (ex-) Virginia Senator George Allen?
Who knew?
Booooo!!! 
Well, no. And I think that’s supposed to be the joke right there - an extremely sarcastic and absurd suggestion that a burglar would sleep with his mask on even in his own home.
It may seem like a stretch, but this kind of humor pops up all the time in farcical movies and shows like Mr. Show. Given the absurdist tone of all the other excerpts of the book, it seems like this kind of gag may have been what the author was going for.
Funniest post of the year.
It was a joke.
Faint praise on January 2.
I rather prefered post #25.
He said, offhandedly.
None of the Amazon.com reviewers are in on the joke. The original book came out in 1968, by the way - so I’m guessing it’s real extreme racism, not comic extreme racism.
What can I say? I don’t like stroking egos.
Scylla, if you had read the complete chapter you would have understood it. The author wasn’t talking about surviving in Harlem or South Central. That chapter was “How to Survive if Your Spaceship Crashes on the Planet of the Apes”.
Those are biracial monkey masks. You’d wear those if you were being robbed by Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet.
…joke…too…cheap…must…resist…
And Beware of Doug blows the easy George W. Bush/chimp joke! The crowd sits in stunned disbelief!