Monthly Book Review

The book How Rude!, by Alex J. Packer, is a book that explains how to be more polite to other people and it includes very useful tips that people can use in their daily lives to better themselves. Alex J. Packer himself is a very polite man who graduated from Philips Exeter Academy, and received a PhD from Harvard University. The purpose of him writing this book was to share his ways of improving people’s mannerism and also how to handle certain situations that people may not be comfortable with. To me, I think this book was written for everyone because everybody is not perfect and everyone can learn some proper behavior and etiquette that can make them a better person. This book is very self-influencing that will change the reader’s ways of being polite.

Alex J. Packer is an extremely educated man who is well known for writing books on parenting, growing up as a teenager, and being polite. Other books that he has written include: Bringing Up Parents: The Teenager’s Handbook, 365 Ways to Love Your Child, Parenting One Day at a Time, and The Nurturing Parent. He has also written articles for magazines such as Education Bulletin, Child, Harvard Graduate School, McCall’s, U.S. News, and World Report. Besides being an author, Packer is also an educator, physiologist, and a screenwriter. Alex attended Philips Exeter Academy which is one of the elite prep schools in America, where he earned a solid education and later went to Harvard University. At Harvard, he majored in Social Relations. He was a specialist in adolescence, parent education, substance abuse, and received a PhD in Educational and Development Physiology from Boston College. Alex has been a head master for eight years at an alternative school for children at the ages of 11-15 in Washington D.C. He has served as a director of Education for the Capitol Children’s Museum and now is currently the President of FCD Educational Services, Inc., a leading Boston-based provider of drug education programs to schools and colleges world-wide. Since the book was dedicated to his sister…”For my sister Janet…who, except for call waiting, is impeccably polite”, Alex most likely wrote How Rude! The Teenager’s Guide to Good Manners, Proper Behavior, and Not Grossing People Out because of his own family and siblings experiences along with his educational experiences as a professional teacher, counselor, and administrator. Also, he has a light-hearted, laugh-at-myself, humorous approach to his writing. For some personal reason, Packer likes to keep a low profile for himself. He refuses to take photos or sign autographs, and makes a point of not being recognized so people won’t stop to ask him questions while he is in a restaurant about proper manners.

Since Alex has been an educator for most of his life, that’s probably the main reason for writing the book. His experiences in education, especially in his interactions with youth, has forged a desire to extend his knowledge of how a family unit operates, how they deal with each other on a daily basis, how they settle disputes, and how they compromise, all lead to how each family member treats people outside of their home. Also, the reverse is true as well, that social interactions with friends, acquaintances, schoolmates, teachers, coaches, co-workers, bosses, the waiter at a restaurant, the check person at Safeway, just about everyone you can come in contact with on a daily basis, can translate to how the family member modifies their behavior and interactions with their family. The deeper, more universal message that Alex sends to his readers is that if everyone treats each other with respect and politeness, with understanding and patience, that all relationships – child to parent, parent to child, sibling to sibling, relative to relative, friend to adult, teacher to student, coach to umpires, referees to players, men to women, gays to straights, Americans to Iranians, Countries to Countries, and so on can exist and communicate without feeling uneasy or with fear. Another reason why I think Alex wrote the book is because he believes that he has something to offer people of all ages about being polite. Alex even includes a “List of Reproducible Pages” and some are for everybody like “The Ten Commandments of Telephone Etiquette”, some are for children such as, “The Thirty Commandments of Classroom Etiquette for Students” and others are for adults like, “The Thirty Commandments of Classroom Etiquette for Teachers.” This explains that everybody has something they can work on to better their lifestyle. I’m not saying that Alex is trying to make us feel like we don’t know anything but I get the feeling that he wants to share some insights in his book so readers can benefit from what he has experienced. I believe he accomplished his goal by writing a humorous book about manners, on a subject that normally is very dry and serious.


In my opinion, I think Alex J. Packer wrote this book for everyone, not one particular audience, because I believe everybody could read this book and make good use of it. Packer mostly writes about mannerism but sometimes he has a variety of topics to enjoy so it isn’t focused on one particular group of people. He has family life, business interviews, romance, friendship, and many other diverse subjects. Not only do I think everybody should read this book but I think everybody needs to read this book. I say this not because I think everyone has bad manners, but because everyone can improve on something in their lives by reading this book. Except there is a particular group that I think all of them need to read this book because they act rude all the time and that would be, high school students. When kids get to high school, they become young adults and are supposedly supposed to become more mature. In some cases this is true but in many others it isn’t. When teens get to high school, they become more arrogant and self centered because they think they are already mature enough to be their own selves but the truth is that they are no where close. As a high school student, I admit that I have had my moments. For the high school students who do read this book, it will really make them more careful about what they say to certain people, how they treat others, and especially what we do as an individual. The only problem is that the young adults who don’t have manners have probably heard the same advice Alex gives by others around them but they don’t really listen to what they are saying or they never cared to change to be a better a person. In the end, it really depends on the individual to take the advice and apply their lives or else it will be useless knowledge. I would recommend his book highly to people of all ages, to the already prim and proper to the most gross and unsophisticated slobs of the world.


Alex J. Packer did a great job writing this book. He really guides the read with directions to become a more mannerable person and includes many real life examples. Packer succeeded in spreading his ideas of being polite and acting correctly in certain situations. This book was written to be read by everyone and if everybody read this book, I believe the world would be a much better place than it is currently.