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Burn the Haystack

Decode Dating, Torch the Duds, and Make Room for Men Who Matter
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( 236 ratings, 67 reviews)
Brief Description
It’s time for a feminist dating revolution! The eagerly awaited first book by the creator of the Burned Haystack Dating Method who’s transforming the dating world by helping you ditch the duds, preserve your peace, and find your needle. How do you find a needle in... Read More
Format: Hardback
$6000
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Releases 6th October 2026 (Approx. Date) Pre-order  "Burn the Haystack" now to secure your copy from our first shipment

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

It’s time for a feminist dating revolution! The eagerly awaited first book by the creator of the Burned Haystack Dating Method who’s transforming the dating world by helping you ditch the duds, preserve your peace, and find your needle.

How do you find a needle in a haystack? You burn the haystack to the ground.

Among Dr. Jennie Young’s legion of fans, the “needle” is a long-term, committed partner and the “haystack” is the dating apps. So often women are advised to “give the guy a chance”—even if the guy is a lazy communicator or looking for someone “fluent in sarcasm.” Young’s refreshing approach to online dating turns this advice on its head: Give almost no one a chance.

A professor of rhetoric and women’s and gender studies, Young has built a career teaching how to decode the hidden meanings in ordinary communication. Fascinated by the rhetorical gambits she saw in men’s profiles when she began dating again at fifty, she created the Burned Haystack Dating Method Facebook group to help other women in the same position. Her group has quickly grown to more than 200,000 members and become the smart woman’s guide to online dating sanity.

Young has revolutionized the dating lexicon, calling out rhetorical patterns to watch for in men’s communication:

  • “I’m a very busy man!”: Leading with this language establishes him at the top of the hierarchy and frames him as a reward for a worthy woman.
  • Test and Apologize: He texts something sexual, then apologizes before she can respond, pretending it was an “accident.” He’s testing if she’ll be okay with immediate objectification. The test is real; the apology isn’t.
  • “My kids come first”: Taken literally, this sounds like a good dad. But if you examine the subtext and the context, he’s in effect saying, “Don’t expect too much from me.”

Young’s engaging system empowers readers to sort through profiles quickly and effectively—and preserve their sanity. And with its blend of scathing humour and academic rigour, Burn the Haystack is so much more than a dating tool—it gives women the skills to break down communication from the classroom to the boardroom and everywhere in between, and the confidence to approach life with a deeper, more powerful level of understanding.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780063447578

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 23 April 2026

Country: United States

Imprint: William Morrow

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 27.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 460g

Pages: 320

About the Author

Jennie Young, PhD, is the creator of Burned Haystack Dating Method and a professor of writing and rhetoric at University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. She publishes work in humor, feminism, applied rhetoric, dating dynamics, and education. Her writing can be seen in McSweeney's, Ms. magazine, The Independent, Huffpost, Inside Higher Ed, and elsewhere. Also the author of a textbook that applies critical discourse analysis to contemporary high school culture, Young focuses on public scholarship, making academic content accessible for everyone.

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