If you are a teenage girl, seasoned after years of navigating the turbulent road of inter-sex relationships with a semi-effective combination of low expectations, patience and a willingness to ignore a broad spectrum of personality flaws, then chances are you know a Tucker Max. Though his name and face will vary, he will be immediately identifiable by a few basic qualities. As many a girl can tell you, a TM‘s inflated sense of self-worth will manifest itself immediately. Flattery will follow, but by the time you begin to see through the charm, he will be gone and you will want to hit your head against the nearest wall, berating yourself for your ignorance. Sound familiar? Though this specific breed of boy has been around for several generations, TM’s have become more and more common, thanks to the crude, inspiring memoirs by Tucker Max himself.

I first became acquainted with this seedy character as I scanned the New York Times bestseller list. After passing over the first few non-fiction titles, I saw the usual accounts of philanthropists, adventurers, and the martyrs of our time. Then, I got to number seven, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Assuming that it was just a catchy, ironic title I read the description. “Life as a self-absorbed, drunken womanizer.” Still, being naive enough to assume that a book on the bestsellers list of the New York Times, one of the world’s most respected publications, would be of good quality, I bought it.

Now, I guess I should have suspected from the reader feedback printed on the rear of the book that this would not be the typical autobiography of an individual of merit.  When someone says, “You are a disgusting, vile, repulsive, repugnant, foul creature.  Because of you, I don’t believe in God anymore. No just God would allow someone like you to exist,” about someone’s life story, you should take it as a subtle hint that this is just not exactly a person of quality character.

“There are fun nights, there are crazy nights, and then there are those nights that make men legends.” This, the first line of Max’s second story “The Night We Almost Died” is a short, sweet example of the author’s smug sense of self-worth. Also, it was one of the only sentences that did not contain profanity so dirty that it would make a sailor blush. This vignette about a bar brawl between Max’s drunken friends, a mechanical bull, and a club of overweight truckers follows the same basic format as all 29 others. First, Max and his motley crew of sketchy friends drink excessive amounts of alcohol. They then do stupid things, prey on unsuspecting women, ditch said women and then reconvene to rank their conquest on “The Tucker Max Rating System.” This useful tool, detailed in appendix of the book, judges women based on their physical appearance and then sorts them into six groups which range from 1-star ‘common-stock pig’ to a 5-star ‘superhottie.’

While I find the book’s content vulgar and disturbing, Max’s darkly comical sarcasm is irresistible. It is easy to see how teenage boys could use it as a sort of how to score Bible, though I think that it can be utilized by members of the opposite sex for an even better purpose. For those females able stomach a chauvinistic pig’s 323-page answer to ‘what did you do last night,’ I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell can serve as a cautionary tale and help to spot Tucker Maxs before its too late.