This book is worth reading if only for its dense essay on Manly Virtue, wherein Professor Mansfield discusses, in Plato and Aristotle, aner and akuron, as well as thymos, in the family and the polity.

This is a bright mind and an entertaining writer. Although at times he indulges himself somewhat distractingly, I can forgive him that because often he does so amusingly—and as too many today forget, humor, like manliness, is a virtue.

Most will dismiss it without a careful reading. Mansfield is a precise and nuanced thinker. This is a great piece of challenging philosophy that true critical thinkers will appreciate.

A book I was unaware of by a reputable Harvard scholar . . . recommended by my friend Jonathan.

This guy literally wrote the book on Manliness. Hard cover. Signed by author for Jon.

You could really just read the first and the last chapter. An interesting brief run-through of Western philosophy and feminist theory concerning gender. Doesn't really give a solution on how to restore 'manliness' other than what the Greeks say: "Always in moderation".

Not as good as I hoped. Though I consider myself a Straussian (though I don't know what that means), and though I agree with much of what he says (though I don't know much about feminism)--I'd as soon read Allan Bloom. Mansfield's writing did not grip me (I am working on his translation of Tocqueville--that is heavy going too). Of course, I do have a series of trading cards called "Michael's Unmanly Traits Trading Cards" so what do I know.

This book is incredibly forthright in its gender bias. Mansfield has obviously been endowed by Harvard University to spew their usually conservative and elitist trash. He claims to be aware of gender studies and responding to that body of knowledge but he never truly engages any of the current theory or even ethnographic research. He ignores sexuality completely; he essentializes gender into two very specific and dichotomous categories; and he appears to celebrate/long for the "manly man" existant before Second Wave Feminism and that has very deep repercussions for women and supposed "non-manly men". The poor guy just seems to have been irritated by gender studies and decided to step out of his usual research on Machiavelli and indirect governance; or Edmund Burke. Essentially, this is an old, conservative Harvard professor paid to spew his idiocy and intellectual masturbation......if you enjoy being irritated with intellectual spooge in your eye this book is for you!

There are many ways to describe my problems with Mansfield's book, but the the most illustrative is to say that Mansfield's treatment of sex differences and by extension his treatment of nature is Hobbesian rather than Platonic. Mansfield constantly says things such as, "[women] are not as manly or as often manly as men" and then uses such observations as the basis for natural sex differences. This mode of argumentation was pioneered by Hobbes, who said that by nature fear of violent death is the strongest passion in men, b/c it is true for most men most of the time. Mansfield should have paid better attention to his teacher Strauss' criticism of that Hobbesian view of nature. Of course it's true that Manliness can and should be read on more than one level. It is also true, to alter a comment Strauss made regarding Machiavelli, that there is an irony beyond Mansfield's irony.

Although I only give this book two stars, I believe that this book should be read and even studied. Unfortunately, those who are most in need of reading this book will not read it. There are those who will dismiss Mansfield's argument without consideration. Time is scarce, and they have better things to do than to question what they already know. Of course, just because an opinion is unquestioned does not mean it is not questionable. As Socrates indicated by saying that he knew only that he knew nothing.

Soft Cover

I should've known.

This is not REALLY a book about masculinity. Mansfield's definition is ambiguous, heavily mediated and romanticized and, quite frankly, poor. This book is trying to reestablish the pre-feminism power dynamic between men and women.... and, quite frankly, it's doing a poor job at it. I don't care how academically decorated Harvey Mansfield is, it's dishonest and fallacious to base his arguments on the writing on John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lived in the nineteenth and eighteenth century respectively. Mansfield disregards hundreds of years of social progress because it suits his argument.

More important, he denies that women and LGBTQ folks can have the same qualities that he attributes to manly men: courage under pressure, espousing a cause, confidence etc. Not only Mansfield's definition is deliberately imprecise, but it's not based on anything aside from cowboy movies, which espoused very rigid stereotypes.

After reading this book, my utmost sincere belief is that the manliest thing to do in 2020 is to hoist every marginalized community up and make it a fair race in every sphere of society. Because nothing is as unmanly as rigging the game for you to win. If you're confident, you're going to compete at equal forces.

This is not a good book.

Couldn't be bothered to finish the book. Mansfield approaches an interesting topic but fails to provide a complete theory; instead his insights remain... parochial.

A great work of political philosophy, and something of a polemic against modern feminism. Mansfield's intellectual history of feminism suffices as a critique of feminism, res ipsa loquitur.