You know him. He's the funny, sweet guy with the great eyes who asks you a million questions and seems mesmerized by every reply. He takes you on the greatest, longest date of your life. He swears he loves cats and cuddling. And his apartment is so clean. He just might be the One.

Then he doesn't call, doesn't write. He sees you coming down the street and he hides behind a tree. He's a cad. And this is his story. After all the girl's guides to sex in the city, here — at last — is the view from the other side of the bed. In Cad: Confessions of Toxic Bachelor, Rick Marin offers himself up for an in-depth look at man's superficial nature.

At 28, a brief, doomed first marriage thrusts him back into Bachelor Hell. A journalist as eager to make it in Manhattan as with its female population, our emotionally myopic hero can never seem to tell if the woman in front of him is too crazy or too sane, until she gets too close. Falling out of love as often as he falls in, he vows more than once to clean up his act, only to relapse into another bender of beauties, blow-offs and bad behavior — all in desperate pursuit of the woman who can redeem him.

In this rollicking, frequently insensitive and ultimately poignant memoir, Marin proves a master of the light touch even in his darkest hours. Part Hugh Hefner, part Hugh Grant, his tale is a rake's progress (in spite of himself) from incorrigible cad to reconstructed romantic. It is one man's story, but many men will read it as their own. And for any woman who has ever wondered, "What was he thinking?" This is what he was thinking.

"[A] withering account of one man's travels in dateland....Marin tells an episodic tale that's more than the sum of its hilarious parts....In the hands of a lesser writer, the book could have been merely a self-indulgent series of diary entries. But Marin's comic timing, insight and self-deprecation vault it to something greater." Publishers Weekly

"Marin...displays an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and appreciation of his own sly humor as he attempts an ironical, insightful picaresque....Marin's prose suffers from a crabbed spontaneity, he provides too much detail, and many of the jokes lack enough spark to ignite a smudge fire. (Those years at the New York Times Sunday Styles section seem to have given him an inflated opinion of his own wit.)" Kirkus Reviews

"Marin gives womanizing a bad name. Throughout the book, he frequently crosses lines of human decency, and does so in such a way that while he knows he's being caddish, it's unclear if he knows he's also earning far worse sobriquets. When Tabitha lets him know what her friends call him — 'the Fucker' — he seems to think the nickname refers to the physical act of sex rather than his abject cruelty....Men tend not to buy books like Cad; the Candace Bushnell blurb on the back reveals its true audience — single women trying to understand why they've fallen into the trap of so many jerks. I doubt, however, that many will find within it any real explanation for why men behave caddishly other than for the sex — which Marin doesn't make much mention of. I fear instead Marin's prose will only further exacerbate their confusion and misandry. While an engaging read, Cad ultimately falls short because of Marin's embrace of the superficial in his writing and cruelty in his dating life." Jake Tapper, Salon.com

"[T]hough he carps, ignores women's tears and...fails to return some phone calls, Marin, disappointingly, comes off as a good-enough guy, frustrated only by his own banality. He fairly disgraces the long line of Lotharios and Don Juans and Casanovas who give cads their good bad name....Marin sketches in this thin book a genuinely sad existence: one in which he cannot love, cannot fight and cannot get off the Reference Train." Virginia Heffernan, The New York Times Book Review

"Witty and surprisingly insightful." The Wall Street Journal

"I've been there." Steve Martin, author of Shopgirl

"The shocking truth about what some men really think about women. Read it if you dare." Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City and Four Blondes

"An outrageous work of chauvinism." Lucinda Rosenfeld, What She Saw...

"Hilarious and surprisingly heartfelt, this is a book every woman should read..." Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report

"99 per cent of men give all the rest a bad name. Thanks to Cad, women now...know the difference." Karen Duffy, author of Model Patient

"Very funny, often desperately funny, and as sure-footed about the Manhattan dating/mating scene as anything I've read." Bruce Jay Friedman, author of The Lonely Guy