I find it hard to believe that this book was bought by anyone other than college students forced to buy this garbage in order to pass some college course. (Bederman is, after all, a college professor in a unique position to "force sell" her book.)

It was a HORRIBLE, trite, book replete with nothing but hackneyed cliches. Bederman ought to be ashamed to have put her name on this book.

The first reader listed above who so strongly disliked this book is way off base and does Bederman a great disservice. I am not a college student and really enjoyed this book. I initially picked it up because of the cover art . While some chapters were more intriguing than others (and the intro and conclusion are the most fun), overall it is a splendid book.

Perhaps the book raised uncomfortable points about masculinity for the first, overly harsh reviewer. I don't know, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Gail Bederman writes a unique and impressive study regarding the changing views of American "manliness" during the decades spanning the turn of the century. In the Victorian years, "manliness" was seen as sexual and physical restraint and moderation in all things. As the 20th century drew near, however, changes in society--which included industrialization, economic instability, and rising immigration--called for a different view of "manliness." Was mankind becoming soft? Was this softness opening the door for the advancement of less "civilized" groups? It is important to note that by "manliness" and "civilization" the subjects of this book meant the "manliness" of whites and white "civilization." This attitude was the reason Jack Johnson's (black boxer) defeat of Jim Jeffries (white boxer) in 1910 was such a socially explosive event.

Bederman offers chapters on several period thinkers on the subject including Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Theodore Roosevelt. Gilman saw women as the driving force of civilization. According to this early feminist, the gender-specific roles of Victorian America and women's economic dependence upon men doomed civilized advancement. Roosevelt, on the other hand, championed a return to the more "savage" behavior of the frontiersman in his "strenuous life" speeches and writings.

Overall, Manliness and Civilization is an interesting, thought-provoking study. It has me wondering how Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis on the end of the American frontier and the Gold/Silver (was one considered more "manly"?) debates of the time ties into this topic