Customer Reviews

American Manhood: Transformations In Masculinity From The Revolution To The Modern Era

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I've used this book in my graduate seminar introducing students to the study of the social sciences, and they loved it. I've also used it in my 12th grade gender studies class, and its sections on boy culture and youthful romantic friendships helped students decide that the study of past lives was worthwhile.

To learn about the culture of manhood, a good place to begin is with a good, strong, well documented history. This is, indeed, a good place to begin. Positing male sociolization within a context that includes its affect on women and children and the family in general, Rotundo is able to place the history of work, virtue, romance and identity in a way that makes sense in terms of where we've been. Hopefully, this will give us a clear first step in terms of where we go from here. Any book that clarifies, from the very beginning, the difference between *gender* and *sex*, is a book that has a good chance of knowing what it is talking about.

I read this book because I am interested in pioneering a new "scouting" program for Christian young people. Rotundo's work has cut new ground; essentially there are few, if any, works available which have made the primary and secondary research connections made in his text. Because I have a greater understanding of previous manhood paradigms, I believe I will be better able to construct the pedogogical parameters of my program. Rotundo's text, incidently, should be read by feminists; it is likely they would develop a more sensitive approach to the objectives they would like to accomplish.

E. Anthony Rotundo has written the book, American Manhood, to show the historical development of the concept of manhood throughout the nineteenth century in order to understand, to a certain extent, the idea of manhood within our own historical time. He focuses on a very narrow group of men for this study: Northern, white Yankees of middle and upper class pretensions. This is an influential group for this period but it does feel that the entire picture of the changes evident in American manhood at the beginning of the twentienth century might have been better understood by including a knowledge of different forms of manhood that were emerging from the burgeoning immigrant population. That being said this study is an important and necessary one to begin the further work needed on this topic and Mr. Rotundo provides many unique and important insights on this topic. An interesting book and a good beginning for more work on the gender politics involved in changing ideas of masculinity.