Hair!: Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: A Curious Kind of Prejudice: The Psychology of Baldness : Part 1
Throughout the centuries, Man (not his real name) has tried everything to hide, treat and repair baldness, as well as a host of nostrums designed to coax hair growth from the scalp (or, at least, money from the wallets of unsuspecting baldies).

Chapter 1: The Psychology of Baldness : Part 2
The rest, as they say, is the history of bald prejudice. But the Bible is only the jumping-off point. History shows us that hair has always been a powerful tool of subjugation and humiliation.

Chapter 1: The Psychology of Baldness : Part 3
Cash's 1988 study, for example, asked three groups of people-young college students, slightly older Old Dominion staffers and aging faculty members-to look at slides of bald and haired men.

Throughout the centuries, Man (not his real name) has tried everything to hide, treat and repair baldness, as well as a host of nostrums designed to coax hair growth from the scalp (or, at least, money from the wallets of unsuspecting baldies). Yet we stand on the brink of a truly historic epoch: Two drugs are now federally approved remedies for baldness and more are on the way while surgical techniques continue to improve, and even hairpieces are becoming acceptable again. Will baldness, the stigma it carries, and the profound psychological toll it takes on men soon be things of the past? Will bald men someday be electable? Are these even rhetorical questions?

Gersh Kuntzman takes you from the laboratories of Merck, maker of Propecia, to the operating rooms of the nation's best hair-transplant surgeons, to the rug men working on the cutting edge of artificial hair design. Hair! covers baldness like nothing before.

Gersh Kuntzman has been a New York newspaperman for more than a decade, most recently as a reporter and columnist for The New York Post. Kuntzman's weekly column, MetroGnome, roots out the quirky underside of New York life..

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