Crimes Against Civility

Maybe Richard M. Simms is just too darn much like “Knots Landing” heroine Karen Fairgate for his own good. “I don’t wanna look at the world through rose-colored glasses, I want the world to be rose-colored!” the original Desperate Housewife once hollered. Ever since, the creator of HowRudeAreYou.com has seconded that emotion, as loudly and as often as anybody possibly could. “Where have manners gone?” he asks. “Since when does being obnoxious get you canonized instead of vilified? Isn’t it nice anymore to be, you know, nice?” In his funny, fast-paced and most definitely furious first book, he looks inside himself and, to be fair, at all of us in hopes of answering these questions. Better still, he offers common-sense solutions that just might make us think as well as laugh. Pick up “Crimes Against Civility” for the nipping-rather-than-biting social commentary and out-of-left-field pop-culture name-dropping, then stay for the subtext. A book may not be able to change the world, but if it’s very good (and this one is), it might at least change your mind.