BWW Reviews: Essentials for the Good Life in THE BIGGEST BLACK BOOK EVER

It is possible that things have never been better for the stylish American male. Suits are slimmed-down and affordable, cocktails are innovative and ubiquitous, and the economy has picked itself up to a point where business is starting to get fun again. There is a new frontier of ambition and elegance out there, but it is still possible that those of us who lived through the sartorial wasteland of the 1990s and the jobless doldrums of the 2000s aren't entirely ready -- or entirely confident -- to venture forth.

If you need that extra measure of confidence, then by all means get yourself on Amazon.com and order the Biggest Black Book Ever right now. In this latest iteration of their topic-by-topic advice manual, the folks at Esquire deliver sound guidance on everything from how to stock a bar to how to keep your marriage from imploding to how to find a suit that fits. You may not find much enlightenment about major career and status choices -- how to set up a stock portfolio, how to find the perfect house or car -- but you will discover day-to-day refinements that can go a long way. If you're already confident in your ways (as I like to believe I am now), measure your attainments here and there against Esquire's advice. If you're newly out in the real world and completely baffled (as I was about eight years ago), make this book your new best friend.

With the presentation it has chosen for the Black Book -- coffee-table proportions, black-and-white illustrations, a balance of whimsy and elegance -- Esquire reaffirms its status as the older, wiser brother of pretty much every other men's magazine. Most of the book (the back half, actually) is taken up by wardrobe advice, much of which aspires to be cosmopolitan, concise, and immune to fads. Before you reach the chapters on suiting, shirting, shoes, and accessories, you will need (or at least be encouraged) to look into Esquire's take on workplace etiquette, travel, cooking, home decorations, weddings, and funerals. You can absorb most of this at leisure, ideally while sitting in a Black Book-recommended armchair ("a leather one with beefy arms and some give in the seat") and while sipping a Black Book-recommended nightcap. Of course you may not, depending on your position, find much of it revelatory.

In treating such unpredictable subjects as women, vacations, and the modern office, the people behind the Black Book are assuming that their readers don't need something on the order of a formal intervention. More briefly, if you're reading these parts of the Black Book, you should mostly have it right. (With exceptions: if for some reason you have underbrush-like, never-clipped eyebrows, page 45 will teach you how to get them under control.) There are sections on boardroom manners and business card criteria, on how to slow dance and how to console your girlfriend if her pet dies. Getting a job that requires business cards or a girlfriend that isn't imaginary is another issue entirely. This is probably why, with a few exceptions, the lifestyle portions of the Black Book are jokier than the others: as for the exceptions, the sections on basic fitness, less-appreciated travel destinations, and setting up a home bar are all well streamlined and spot on. But women and money: why can you do but crack jokes and persevere, in the face of such mysteries?

You can do more, of course, with the fundamentals of fashion. Even though Esquire already issues a Handbook of Style, the discussions of clothing and accessories in the Black Book are fresh enough to merit your good time. You will learn the essentials of picking a double-breasted suit, the rules for matching a pair of sunglasses to the shape of your head, and the difference between barleycorn and birdseye fabric patterns. Through it all, much emphasis is placed on British, Italian, and vintage American styles, and almost none is placed on high-risk, idiotic-in-retrospect trends: you won't see this editorial team endorsing normcore, air tie, any suits that are any percentage polyester, or Jaden Smith. (Remember people, this isn't GQ.) Ending in this grown-up, down-to-details fashion is an excellent move in other ways, too. The final pages of the Black Book offer city-by-city recommendations for men's stores, barbers, dry cleaners, and watch repair. Whether or not readers will ever need this advice, they can -- based on the solid directions they've just seen -- trust what they're reading.

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