Table of Contents

* Introduction: Toward a History of American Manhood * Community to Individual: The Transformation of Manhood at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century * Boy Culture * Male Youth Culture * Youth and Male Intimacy * The Development of Mens Attitudes toward Women * Love, Sex, and Courtship * Marriage * Work and Identity * The Male Culture of the Workplace * Passionate Manhood: A Changing Standard of Masculinity * Roots of Change: The Women Without and the Woman Within * Epilogue: Manhood in the Twentieth Century

About the Author

E. Anthony Rotundo teaches history and develops programs on race and gender at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Although the title exaggerates the scope of his study of white, middle-class Northern men in the 19th century, Rotundo here offers a nuanced and intriguing approach to a new topic in gender history. A history teacher at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, he draws on sources including diaries, autobiographies and the work of early social scientists. At the beginning of the 19th century, he demonstrates, the concept of manhood was affected by the shift of emphasis from community to individual; by new expectations of motherhood; and by the emergence of a distinct ``boy culture.'' Current masculine identity, Rotundo contends, has its roots in standards of action and vigor that date to the late 19th century, the same period that saw the classification of men into either ``tough and strong'' or ``tender-minded.'' In an epilogue, Rotundo suggests that contemporary ideals of manhood--from the ``existential hero'' to the ``spiritual warrior''--signify a ``turning away from women'' and proposes instead that men learn to balance their individualism with a renewed sense of connection. (Apr.)