Tucker Max

Tucker Max was born in Atlanta and grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. He studied at the University of Chicago and earned a law degree from Duke University in 2001, but he did not practice law.

He began posting stories about his drinking and sex life on his website. They became the books I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2006), Assholes Finish First (2010) and Hilarity Ensues (2012), part of a genre of crude memoirs for young men that critics called fratire. Feminist groups protested his campus talks, saying his writing promoted a culture of rape. A 2009 film of his first book failed at the box office.

He then changed course. Mate: Become the Man Women Want (2015), written with the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, rejects pickup tricks. It tells men to become better partners through health, skills and honest self-presentation, based on what women look for. In 2014 he co-founded Scribe Media, a company that helps people write and publish books, and he left it in 2021. He also helped Tiffany Haddish write The Last Black Unicorn (2017).