Synopses & Reviews
An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic, now more relevant than ever, argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs.During the latest wave of feminism in the 1970s, Americans realized that girls and women were being shortchanged in society. The response was a number of social reforms that gave girls and women the attention and assistance that was long overdue. Consequently, girls have succeeded in school and women in society so that they now outperform boys and men.
Christina Hoff Sommers contends that today's women's lobby won't face facts, fearing that aiding boys will happen only at the expense of girls. Women's advocates are hindering efforts to address today's gender imbalance, Sommers posits, and it's time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help.
Called "provocative and controversial...impassioned and articulate" (The Christian Science Monitor), this new edition of The War Against Boys offers a new preface and six new chapters, plus updates throughout the rest of the book, which argue that the problem of underachievement among American boys not only persists but is actually growing. Among the new topics Sommers tackles: how the war against boys is a war against our technological future and how our schools have become hostile environments for boys. She offers realistic, achievable solutions to these problems that include boy-friendly pedagogy, character and vocational education, and single-sex classrooms.
The War Against Boys shows how our society has continued to overemphasize the troubles of girls while our boys' issues of devastating self-esteem and academic problems remain neglected. Boys need help, but not the sort they've been getting, and The War Against Boys is an incisive call to recognize and confront the growing implications.
Review
Marilyn Gardner The Christian Science Monitor Provocative and controversial...Sommers's voice is impassed and articulate.
Review
Richard Bernstein The New York Times The burden of [this] thoughtful, provocative book is that it is American boys who are in trouble, not girls. Ms. Sommers... makes these arguments persuasively and unflinchingly, with plenty of data to support them.
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Mary Eberstadt The Washington Times This book promises to launch and influence an enduring national debate....The author trains her empirical and polemical skills on an issue of demonstrable and often poignant urgency.
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Danielle Crittenden New York Post In Christina Hoff Sommers's splendid new book...she shows the damage that is being done to our sons by adults determined to stop them from being, well, boys.
Synopsis
Despite popular belief, American boys tag behind girls in reading and writing ability, and they are less likely to go to college. Our young men are greatly at risk, yet the best-known studies and experts insist that it's girls who are in need of our attention. The highly publicized "girl crisis" has led to many changes in American schools, politics, and parenting...but at what cost?
In this provocative book, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that our society has continued to overemphasize the troubles of girls while our boys suffer from the same self-esteem and academic problems. Boys need help, but not the sort of help they've been getting.
About the Author
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise institute in Washington, D.C. She has a PhD in philosophy from Brandeis University and was formerly a professor of philosophy at Clark University. Sommers has written for numerous publications and is the author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. She is married with two sons and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Table of Contents
ContentsPreface
ONE Where the Boys Are
TWO Reeducating the Nation's Boys
THREE Guys and Dolls
FOUR Carol Gilligan and the Incredible Shrinking Girl
FIVE Gilligan's Island
SIX Save the Males
SEVEN Why Johnny Can't, Like, Read and Write
EIGHT The Moral Life of Boys
NINE War and Peace
Notes
Index