Hell Toupee is the first book of its kind, and for good reason.

We've all seen those television commercials promising a revolutionary hair loss solution for men. But how many of us know what happens, or would even want to, when a balding guy falls for the ploy and signs up?

In this painfully funny memoir, Mitch Friedman blows the proverbial lid off the experience.

About to turn 30 in 1993, with his once ample afro reduced to an afterthought, he joins Head Restart for Men, with disastrous results. At this pivotal point in his budding career as a New York City sketch comedy and improv actor, he finds himself literally stuck with a blatantly obvious, hair-covered needlepoint-canvas beanie glued to his scalp for a whole year. It's the ultimate in a series of increasingly absurd situations, including a summer spent as the world's suckiest door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, and a hopefully sex-filled Club Med vacation ruined by a trapeze accident, and a hurricane.

Spectacular lapses in luck and decision-making success begin when this "nice Jewish boy from Long Island" has his self-confidence shaken as a young teenager by a tumultuous divorce that leaves his mother unhinged, and his Archie Bunker-esque father with a pregnant girlfriend. Yet despite the setbacks, Mitch perseveres with a sense of humor, following his creative muse wherever it may lead him, no matter how dicey the neighborhood.