This was an interesting one...[and, updated after second reading, September '22]:

Still quite interesting. I changed my stars from 3 to 4 stars with the benefit of nine more years reading and life experience. I don't agree with all of Mansfield's analysis - but when is that the best standard for the quality of a book? If you read it carefully (an important caveat, not often followed), this book will make you think. Mansfield's basic thesis is that manliness is assertion, the insistence upon being noticed or respected - that quality that makes humans (the neutral term is intentional) assert their importance and meaning to those around them. As much, manliness is not an exclusively male trait, though it is a preponderantly male trait. And neither is it an unalloyed good or a pure evil - Mansfield is far too subtle for such a simplistic reading. Rather, this quality exists, and it must be understood and employed, not ignored.

Mansfield presents a number of historical examples that reveal the social and psychological costs of second wave feminism, like how the rights and privileges of men have become divorced from the responsibilities of men, and how that has hurt men, women, and children. It's a dense read and really too academic to be completely useful to the lay-reader. I'm looking out for a book that can apply these ideas to more contemporary examples. I think that would be more compelling, and more helpful to men, women, and teachers while remaining a tad provocative.

"Fellas, is it gay to depise women but drool for manly men"

This was on me as I knew I was hare reading through this book. But a part of me was hoping to be proved wrong and to actually grasp some knowledge from this or a contrapoint that would challenge my beliefs.

God was I wrong... this was like 500 pages of some sort of naturalistic praise of manliness, which i get it, it's literally on the name of the book. But I was supposing a scholar would have already accepted the fact that those personality traits that we have claimed are masculine by nature are the result of years of social construction.

What impressed me the most is the pedantic air which Mansfield approach some feminist themes. Not only disregarding the work of great thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, but openly saying that they're only emulating me thinkers (as this was not the result of years and years of the social sciences being dominated by men).

Also. WTF with his BAD interpretation of Nietzche. Like I felt I was reading the essay of a 16 year old who has encountered the theory of the Ubermensch for the first time. It was painful to read.

Fellas, like i understand the idea of traditional masculinity is "under fire" but God, please don't take this guy seriously

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Particularly because many of the negative reviews by women and unmanly males demonstrate that their authors do not understand Mansfield's points and are responding too emotionally to grasp his nuance. That said, this book should have been an essay, since he is too repetitive. You could profitably read just the introduction and conclusion and get almost all of the substance of this book.

Mansfield brings up a lot of good points and offers a reading of numerous classics I had not really considered, at least not consciously. Ultimately, I think he recognized the problem but comes up short of teh solution, yielding to modern society rather than accepting the ends to which his arguments led.

Manliness, by the amusingly-named Harvey Mansfield, is not a self-discovery book, although it's shelved with them. Mansfield's thesis is that not much effort has been put into defining and characterizing manliness - both the positive and negative aspects of it. His approach passes the sniff test with regard to the inherent contradictions in the gender-neutral society, and several chapters are spent in a philosophical review of the philosophical underpinnings of feminism and its development. In truth, this is a book of philosophy. He makes a pretty coherent case that many of the approaches taken by those thinkers at the core of the feminist movement were less about changing the roles that men and women had and more about attacking the idea of roles at all - he shows the thread of will-to-power thinking from Nietzsche to de Beauvoir. One refreshing aspect of this book is that it serves as a refresher survey in a large number of philosophical approaches. I liked his concluding approach (based on John Stuart Mill) that the best way to address society in general on this topic is to increase the distance between public and private behavior and expectations. While his tone fluctuates from conversational to pedantic, I think this is still a pretty good book. He did make a connection that I hadn't thought of previously in a throwaway line - Darwinian evolution can be understood as a market-based approach to understanding speciation and diversity: neat!

Great read investigating the characteristics of Manliness. It does an excellent job explaining why Manliness is viewed with suspicion by the gender neutral society advocates. It also touches upon manliness' meaning for women's interests and why the quality may not be so bad for women and society overall if employed correctly. The book amusingly explains the position of the poet, the scientists and various philosophers in regard to the goodness (or lack of) inherent in manliness. Worth reading.

I kept having to check the publishing date, so much of it seemed a few decades out of time. Yet it was published in 2006. His references, his commentary all speak of an earlier time. I stopped reading after the third chapter. Not worth my time to read this pointless, outdated book. Published in 2006!

Long-winded.

I did not actually finish reading this book. It is superficial, redundant, and has nothing useful to say.
Methinks the man analyzes too much!

Jeg blev ikke færdig med bogen, idet det blev for kompliceret, uklart og jeg ikke fra starten var helt overbevist om, at jeg skulle læse bogen.
Det er et forsøg på at bestemme det mandige, som er en positiv størrelse. Der spilles op mod det kønsløse samfund, som er nutiden.
De biologiske forhold stilles op og de støtter heldivis common sense. Intet nyt i dette. Alt for meget modstand mod videnskab.
Der er flere spændende refferater og argumenter fra overraskende hold. Han har læst spændende bøger om emnet og giver dem godt fra sig.

This is one of the most boring books I've read. I wish I had quit after the first 50 pages. The author was needlessly long winded, wordy, and obtuse. It drones on and on, uselessly banal, like a student tasked with writing a term paper that requires a minimal number of pages but only has enough material to fill a miniscule amount.

The front inside book cover challenges: "This book invites—no, demands—a response from its readers." What manly man would not respond? The book is not at all a "wide-ranging" and "comprehensive study of manliness". The was no mention or discussion, for example, of the Japanese Bushido Code.

Mansfield in the concluding chapter writes "I am not going to end this book by giving out pointers on how to live, though I supposed I could." I doubt that he could. Had he done so, it would have been a better book. He goes further, "My book is for thinkers, ..." Well, I suspect that manly men are more. They are doers as well. Come to think of it, what manly men would want to read a book like this?

He extols the manliness of actors and fictional characters like John Wayne instead of people like Audie Murphy. Both were actors, but unlike the former, whom others have criticized that in real life never served in the military, the latter was a highly decorated war hero.

In the use of fiction, Mansfield wants you to accept the fiction authors' creations to argue his point. Whereas in the use of non-fiction, he wants you to accept his interpretation of those authors' work. Did you happened to read all of cited works Nietzsche, Hobbes, Locke, etc. as he alleged had? I'm not even sure he knows any manly men. There were no reference in the book to any.

I didn't buy any of his arguments. I think Naomi Wolf didn't either (http://goo.gl/ud7S2E).