Self-Made Man

By Norah Vincent

Penguin Books, $15

For readers who missed this book last year, the new paperback release offers a good excuse for taking a belated look at Los Angeles Times columnist Norah Vincent's insightful and surprising glimpse behind the testosterone curtain in Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again. In what began as a friendly dare from an East Village drag king, Vincent ended up living as a man on and off for about 18 months, “passing” in a variety of gloriously all-male settings—from the bowling alley to the monastery.

In an extended journalistic experiment reminiscent of John Howard Griffin's groundbreaking Black Like Me, the out lesbian develops an empathy for the American man and the many restrictions and expectations imposed on him, writing with candor and compassion about her newfound compatriots of masculinity. As “Ned,” the seemingly fearless Vincent joins a two-bit sales team, learning to snort her way to success with faked confidence, then joins a bowling league and bonds with her teammates with surprising—if unspoken—depth. A short stint in a Roman Catholic monastery has the masquerading lesbian mistaken for a gay man, and Ned's dozens of Internet dates reveal an unexpected viciousness among straight women. Several chapters offer a few more anecdotes than are necessary, but Vincent's straightforward, smooth-as-silk prose keeps us engaged. Perhaps her most surprising revelation is that after a life being perceived as a masculine woman, “suddenly, as a man, people were seeing my femininity bursting out all over the place, and they did not receive it well.”—Christopher Cappiello

Mr. Confidential

By Samuel Bernstein

Walford Press, $22.95

Britney, Lindsay or Angelina and Brad don't know how bad it could be. If today's celebrity press coverage seems insatiably salacious, Samuel Bernstein's guilty pleasure of a book about publisher Robert Harrison and his 1950s gossip rags reveals that, if anything, today's stars have it easy when it comes to the threat of exposure from seedy journalists.

Harrison published a host of periodicals of questionable value, including some tame pin-up books, but he was best known for Confidential, a celebrity gossip magazine that kept more than a few stars trembling about what dirt would be dug up next. The pages of Confidential routinely leveled charges of infidelity, homosexuality and communism against the day's stars, while Harrison's own staffers were sometimes more colorful than the celebrities they slammed. Bernstein touches on the enduring mystery about Confidential leaving Rock Hudson alone; longtime speculation says either a studio exec or both actors' agent, Henry Willson, traded dirt on Rory Calhoun to hush any homo talk on Rock.

Bernstein writes with melodramatic flair appropriate to the subject. Grainy black-and-white photos and seemingly photocopied Confidential covers and clips illustrate the endearingly overblown book with a fitting lack of frills. It's hard to determine if Mr. Confidential exposes, revels in or contributes to irresponsible journalism, but, like passing a wreck on the Hollywood Freeway, it's hard to resist peeking. —C.C.