Having learnt Aikido with the Tokyo riot police (ANGRY WHITE PYJAMAS), hunted for the world's longest snake in the jungles of the Far East (BIG SNAKE), Robert Twigger now turns his attention to other traditionally male pursuits and pastimes (some of which are fairly close to home, some of which are more extreme), and looks at the questions these raise about masculinity and the role of man in modern society. BEING A MAN isn't exactly a search for the lost attributes of primitive man - hunting, shooting, making fires, etc - but, hooked on a nostalgia for past writers such as Hemingway, the book features Twigger participating in, and writing on: the informal rules and thrill seeking of solo climbing, bullfighting in Spain, the 'illicit pleasure of buying my first gun', and the rules of survival with a tribe of Naga headhunters - the sort of activities and pursuits often scorned in the modern, interiorised office-based world. He also looks at why men feel the urge to escape in this way, and why, even in mundane everyday life, modern man is trapped in an endless loop of having to prove himself a man.