Christian Lander, author of the new controversial book Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Taste of Millions,"" knows white people can be difficult to understand. They all have ""unique"" tastes, yet every other ""cool"" white person agrees with everything they do. Farmers' markets, and food co-ops and Trader Joe's bank on the need of white people to be ""organic"" and ""original,"" but if they all go, how can they say they are truly better than everyone else?
If you've never understood these and the many other upper-middle-class white phenomena (why ARE '80s nights so popular?), then this book is for you.
Lander's guide is the definitive book for learning how to exploit all the weaknesses white people don't even know they have, particularly the whites from a single section of upper-middle-class American society. They are a crafty and confusing subset of humanity, and learning how to deal directly with them is key.
In the approximately 200-page book, the things that white people apparently enjoy are listed from one to 150. The reader can look up everything from T-shirts to non-motorized boating, what it has to do with white people and how to take advantage of their love of it.
This can come in handy even if you are a white person. Why have you always had a secret love of kitchen gadgets or premium juice? With this book, there is an easy way to find out.
The problem may now be that it's too easy. Lander lists white people stuff as everything from Apple, to irony, to dogs. After a while it can get a little pretentious because who doesn't enjoy ""The Simpsons,"" books or cheese? Maybe white people only enjoy it on a weird level for the superiority factor, as Lander suggests, or maybe Lander is ascribing things that are easy to like to a single race.
The book itself is an outgrowth of Landers' much-visited blog by the same name. To get an idea of what the book is like before buying, visit stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Having many of the same listed items, the blog format gives each thing a link, but the book begins without an index. The structure ends up leaving the reader at a loss as to whether they should read it straight through or search for a certain white person thing to look up. Often the book feels as if it's just been copied and pasted into a sellable format, and if read straight through it gets repetitive.
This book purposefully tries to offend and guide the reader to a better understanding of all white people. It's hilarious and bitingly clever - in small doses. Although Lander has an amusing encyclopedic-type guide in ""Stuff White People Like,"" it's probably better to check out his blog. It has the same amount of giggles but without the $14 price tag.
