Synopses & Reviews
This book invites no, demands a response from its readers. It is impossible not to be drawn in to the provocative (often contentious) discussion that Harvey Mansfield sets before us. This is the first comprehensive study of manliness, a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our gender-neutral society does not like it but cannot get rid of it.
Drawing from science, literature, and philosophy, Mansfield examines the layers of manliness, from vulgar aggression, to assertive manliness, to manliness as virtue, and to philosophical manliness. He shows that manliness seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments. Manly men in their assertiveness raise issues, bring them to the fore, and make them public and political as for example, the manliness of the womens movement.
After a wide-ranging tour from stereotypes to Hemingway and Achilles, to Nietzsche, to feminism, and to Plato, the author returns to todays problem of unemployed manliness. Formulating a reasoned defense of a quality hardly obedient to reason, he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness, and to give it honest and honorable employment.
Review
"Readers of Manliness will be alternately charmed and exasperated, but they will be challenged to think, and as a result may well view the world differently than they did before....[A]n unforgettable wake-up call to our slumbering liberal society." Charles R. Kesler, Claremont Review of Books
Review
"Manliness is not merely an engaging book about philosohy: it is that much rarer thing a genuinely philosophical book that enlists the reader in the adventure of thought." James Piereson, New Criterion
Review
"Thoughtful, vexing, and ultimately irresistible book...neither a chest-thumping celebration of masculinity nor a scientific snore on 'biological maleness.'" Oprah Magazine
Review
"Enthralling....[Mansfield's] assertion of what manliness is is thrillingly argued and never less than fascinating." James Bowman, New York Sun
Review
"It's a subtle exploration about the virtues and vices of the thymotic urge." Frank Rich, New York Times
Review
"[Mansfield's] cavalier way with logic, his lack of definitional clarity, his ideological enthusiasm, and his tendency to romanticize characters similar to Bonds and Barrett make his book, well, uncourageous, just when we badly need to think well about how better to cultivate true courage." Martha C. Nussbaum, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
About the Author
Harvey C. Mansfield is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, Harvard University.
CITATION: "Mansfield argues that manliness-in its combination of stubbornness and rationality-provides a ground for political life. His work is a thoughtful attempt to move us to think more clearly about who we are, and about the future of our liberal society."-Mary Nichols, Baylor University
(Mary Nichols)
CITATION: "Annoying at times (often!), but never uninteresting, this book has much of importance to say."-Arlene Saxonhouse, University of Michigan
(Arlene Saxonhouse)
CITATION: "A work of thought as well as a provocation, Manliness deserves to be widely read, argued over, and pondered."- David Bromwich, Yale University
(David Bromwich)
CITATION: "thoughtful, vexing, and ultimately irresistible book . . . neither a chest-thumping celebration of masculinity nor a scientific snore on `biological maleness.'"
(1. Oprah Magazine)
CITATION: "It's a subtle exploration about the virtues and vices of the thymotic urge."
(Frank Rich, 4. New York Times)
CITATION: "Mansfield's defense of what, politically, has become indefensible by anyone wanting to keep his reputation intact is most welcome."
(Theodore Dalrymple, American Enterprise)
CITATION: "Mansfield argues that efforts in Western society to equalize the status of men and women are doomed to failure."
(Kevin Horrigan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
CITATION: "[This] new book entitled simply Manliness amounts to a spirited defense of the male psychology."-Joseph R. Phelan, Washington Times
(Joseph R. Phelan, Washington Times)
CITATION: "Amusing, refreshing, and outrageous observations. . . . Many readers will be grateful to him for his candor and bravado."
(Christina Hoff Somers, Weekly Standard)