This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Glover. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Who is Dr. Robert Glover? Why is he such a controversial author?
Dr. Robert Glover, known for his self-help classic No More Mr. Nice Guy, is a former psychotherapist who now works full-time helping “Nice Guys” reclaim their masculinity and improve their approach to dating.
Read more about Dr. Robert Glover below.
Dr. Robert Glover’s Background
Dr. Robert Glover is an author, life coach, and the internationally recognized authority on “Nice Guys.” Formerly a marriage and family psychotherapist (and minister), he now hosts online classes, podcasts, and group therapy focused primarily on empowering recovering Nice Guys. He’s also the founder of TPI (Total Personal Integration) University, which offers classes that help both men and women live with intention.
In addition to NMMNG, Glover has also written Dating Essentials for Men: The Only Dating Guide You Will Ever Need.
As the “Godfather of the Manosphere” (or pro-male corners of the internet) and a regular contributor to many male-centered podcasts and radio shows, Dr. Robert Glover has become somewhat of a cult figure among the men’s rights movement and pick-up artists. His long-time dedication to men’s empowerment—specifically in reference to men embracing their masculinity and developing their “game” with women—and his insistence that the modern man cares too much about pleasing women has made him popular among these groups. You can connect with Dr. Robert Glover below:
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Originally published as an e-book in the fall of 2000, No More Mr. Nice Guy became a media phenomenon when Dr. Robert Glover caught the attention of conservative talk-shows The O’Reilly Factor and The Rush Limbaugh Show. The book was then officially published in winter of 2003 by Running Press. Since then, it’s been translated into eight different languages. Today, it’s one of the top-selling “personal transformation” e-books on Amazon and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
The fact that Dr. Robert Glover was able to quit his private practice as an LMFT and focus on helping Nice Guys full time (and continues to do so almost two decades later) shows how much of a community has arisen around his program. However, despite Glover’s good intentions and desire to help men become more self-accepting and less bitter—particularly towards women—the online communities that have formed around male-centric texts like NMMNG and Superior Man have taken on a life of their own.
The most controversial of these communities is arguably “The Red Pill.” Deemed so offensive by Reddit that the forum has been quarantined since 2018, this community of men believes women—especially feminists—have stripped all men of their masculine identity. More specifically, the community discusses “sexual strategy” and rigid gender roles.
Despite the fact that Glover actively criticizes Nice Guys who are resentful and furious towards women, many of the men in this community adopted his book as gospel, interpreting it in ways that aligned with their views. For example, when discussing boundaries, Glover says bad behavior from your partner shouldn’t be tolerated or rewarded. He then provides an example: If your puppy kept peeing inside the house, you wouldn’t reward it with a treat for doing so.
While the use of a dog metaphor here might not have been the most sensitive, the Red Pill community took it even farther, interpreting this to mean, “Training a woman or child is no different than training a dog.” Although NMMNG is meant to steer men away from this kind of thinking, Glover’s hard stance on gender roles—including the implication that women and feminism are partially at fault for the existence of Nice Guys—made room for the Red Pill interpretation of his work.
This being said, NMMNG seems to have hit peak popularity within the Red Pill community years ago (it has since been replaced by other texts in the forum’s sidebar). More recently, the book is being reclaimed and discussed by ex-Red Pill men. Having decided to leave the manosphere, these men seem to discuss NMMNG with greater nuance, acknowledging that while the text was helpful in guiding them on their journey to self-acceptance, they disagree with some of Glover’s personal opinions on gender and women.
These (somewhat) opposite communities both find value and insight in NMMNG, demonstrating the text’s ability to be interpreted in different ways based on who’s reading it. Either way, Dr. Robert Glover’s text remains both controversial and useful decades later.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Robert Glover's "No More Mr. Nice Guy" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full No More Mr. Nice Guy summary :
- Why being a "Nice Guy" isn't actually a good thing
- Why Nice Guys miss out on a life of self-acceptance, empowerment, and satisfaction
- How to know if you are a Nice Guy and how to become an "Ideal Man" instead
