A bit complicated to follow at times but overall a good book with a great deal of information regarding the history of the title of gentleman.

A must read

Clare's review of this was so good I am recommending it to my daughters and I want to read it as well!

The first page was good but then just proceeded to be a reasonably shallow self-help book. Far too simple to be of any real insight. If youve never read anything of this kind before you may find it useful but its just the usual 'lifes too short to worry/hate/anger/judgement' insert whatever you feel appropriate. I hoped for more from the title buts nothing I didnt already know.

This book is mostly about the history and philosophy behind being a gentleman. If you're looking for practical situational advice, it's only somewhat useful. Not an etiquette manual.

«Джентльмен подібний до воїна, бо знає, що має, за що битися, і він буде битися. Він — коханець, тому що дозволяє дружині та сімʼї звільнити себе від тиранії його его. Він подібний до монаха, бо застосовує ученість для розгадування таємниць людської душі. Він володіє цим поєднанням стриманості й відчуженості, що зветься sprezzatura, і це можна так само легко назвати незворушністю»

Some books have so much information, you need to read them twice. Such is the. Are with this title. The history and application to the modern world of ideas such as honor, chivalry, and other gentlemanly qualities is quite extensive. I had listened to it the first time and now have read it through again. The ideals presented are nothing short of solid goals a man can set for himself.

In need of multiple reads to truly grasp all the apparently problematic arguments and conclusions.

While providing several great threads to follow up on, the book seems incomplete. On the positive side, the book provides a history of chivalry and shows how the idea evolved through time. Chapters 2 and 3, on knighthood in the middle ages and on the English and American idea of the gentleman respectively, were excellent. The later chapters were not as good.

The book convinced me, without intending to, that the “gentleman” must be attached to an objective standard. The author doesn’t require a system for discerning the good, the true, and the beautiful, (though he seems to suggest that he finds Christian ethics to be the answer personally), yet he argues throughout that the gentleman must be willing to fight and die for these things. This system would be found, if it’s found anywhere, in religious commitment. Yet, the author goes so far as to say that the gentleman must not overemphasize his religious commitment to the detriment of his other duties.  And this, to me, is why the book is inadequate. The author’s claim that religious faith is one of several orbiting duties that the gentleman balances is one that I see as deadly to the whole idea of chivalry. There must be priority given to fundamental commitments. From these fundamental commitments, we can then order our duties and act accordingly. Without this ordering, the gentleman is lost and chivalry will remain dead.

In other words, Miner doesn’t solve what may be called the Bibb Barrett problem. Bibb Barrett, a character from Walker Percy’s book The Last Gentleman, is a young man who is lost and who knows he is lost. He comes from a line of great men, gentlemen in fact, but he himself has no clue how to act. He wants to be a man of honor, but he doesn’t know how. Percy describes the degeneration of Southern chivalry and honor through the Barrett family line:

“Over the years his family had turned ironical and lost its gift for action. It was an honorable and violent family, but gradually the violence had been deflected and turned inward. The great grandfather knew what was what and said so and acted accordingly and did not care what anyone thought. He even wore a pistol in a holster like a Western hero and once met the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a barbershop and invited him then and there to shoot it out in the street. The next generation, the grandfather, seemed to know what was what but he was not really so sure. He was brave but the gave much thought to the business of being brave. He too would have shot it out with the Grand Wizard if only he could have made certain it was the thing to do. The father was a brave man too and he said he didn't care what others thought, but he did care. More than anything else, he wished to act with honor and to be thought well of by other men. So living for him was a strain. He became ironical. For him it was not a small thing to walk down the street on an ordinary September morning. In the end he was killed by his own irony and sadness and by the strain of living out an ordinary day in a perfect dance of honor. As for the present young man, the last of the line, he did not know what to think. So he became a watcher and a listener and a wanderer.”

In a postmodern world, Bibb Barrett is where abstract chivalry leads us (or to a Miniver Cheevy, which Miner refers to). Miner does a great job of plugging in several roles and duties to the surge protector of chivalry and gentlemanly conduct. He just neglects to highlight the importance of plugging the surge protector into the electrical outlet, which is not a minor detail.  From this perspective, it is easy to see how chivalry soured and turned into pretension, pride of social standing, debauchery, and laziness. And it also explains why the thought of a “gentleman” is laughable in our modern culture. It is out of fashion because it implies living in accordance with a certain set of principles, and these principles are held to be superior to any other way of living.  But the principles themselves are essential to the whole idea of chivalry.

This is a book that has been calling to me from my wife’s section of the bookshelf for a number of years. Without knowing much about it, I decided to dive in. What I discovered was a serious (but not too serious) discussion on chivalry through the prism of three historical archetypes (i.e., the knight, the monk, and the lover), and how we might define and apply chivalry today. The author is not crusading for a new age of chivalry, but he does provide a great deal of food for thought.

This book is a delightful read. The blurb on the dusk jacket describes the book as “erudite and witty” and I’ll be damned if that isn’t right on the money. The author is clearly well-read and isn’t afraid to throw out some big words when the opportunity presents itself, but this always done tastefully and with restraint. Naturally.

This book has received mixed reviews here on GR. I perused several negative reviews to see what people might be thinking, and found nearly all of them to be disingenuous and petty, if not outright dishonest. This book was written objectively and honestly by an author with an obvious passion for the subject. What more could a reader ask for?

If you are looking for a guide to being a gentleman, you've probably come to the wrong place. This is a rather thorough survey of the literature over the last 1000 years that define chivalry and its evolution into the idea of the gentleman. There are no quick answers here, but it delves with real seriousness into concepts of defining the gentle man and the great men who shaped or described them. While I know little of the scholarship in this area, this book seems well grounded and thorough. There is a great deal of valuable ideas to digest.

More a review of the literature than a manual of manners. A balanced critique/defense of the worldly virtues. My sprezzatura prevents me from saying more.