Posts from the ‘Reviews’ Category

  • Siberian Education

    About The Wolves Who Run With Men

    November 24th, 2011 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    A review of Nicolai Lilin’s Siberian Education.

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  • Manning up

    Kay’s Man-child Revisited

    May 23rd, 2011 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | 6 Comments

    Kay Hymowitz’s piece for the Wall Street Journal, titled “Where Have The Good Men Gone?” drew a lot of criticism from men and women alike. It’s old news now, but I just got around to reading her book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.With either help or direction from her [...]

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  • decline

    Stay Male and Fail

    December 27th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | 2 Comments

    On Guy Garcia’s The Decline of Men (2008) In The Decline of Men, Guy Garcia begins and ends his discussion of the American male’s loss of power at the Burning Man festival. In front of a sign that says “TRUTH” he sees an effigy of a man who is half-built, headless. The image of a [...]

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  • guyland

    Only Feminists are REAL MEN

    November 29th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | 2 Comments

    On Micheal Kimmel’s Guyland. (Originally posted on The Spearhead.com, Nov. 2010.) As far as Michael Kimmel is concerned, everyone else is just a “guy.” In Guyland, Kimmel describes and analyzes young American males with all the civilized horror of an eighteenth century missionary reporting on the customs and activities of naked heathen cannibals. These savages, [...]

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  • firebelly

    An Empty Stomach

    November 14th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Sam Keen’s Fire in the Belly. (Originally published at The Spearhead, Nov. 2010) Sam Keen’s Fire in the Belly, like Robert Bly’s Iron John, is around twenty years old this year. It remains in print, and remains on the very short list of “men’s studies” books written by men who don’t identify themselves explicitly [...]

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  • iron-john

    Revisiting Iron John

    November 6th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Robert Bly’s Iron John. (First Posted to The Spearhead, Nov 2010) Robert Bly’s Iron John touched off a national discussion about manhood when it camped on the New York Times Best Seller list for over 60 weeks, starting in 1990. The enduring popular caricature of the “men’s movement” — a bunch of guys sitting [...]

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  • knights-own

    A Western Hagakure

    November 6th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry (Originally Published on AlternativeRight.com, May 2010) The Hagakure is a collection of commentaries on the Way of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, recorded between 1709 and 1716. Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a samurai during a period of peace who was not permitted to commit seppuku following the death of [...]

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  • honor

    What Happened to Honor?

    November 6th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Honor: A History by James Bowman (Originally published at AlternativeRight.com, May 2010) What happened to honor in the West? And without honor — or at least an honest understanding of it — are we capable of facing the challenges of the 21st Century? In Honor: A History, Bowman places these questions in a political [...]

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  • fm

    The Hero Engine

    November 6th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Sam Sheridan’s The Fighter’s Mind. (Originally posted to AlternativeRight.com, April 2010) If you want to study the engine of masculinity — if you want to know what really drives men — don’t start at the junkyard. Yet, that’s too often exactly where people who study men start. It’s not that you can’t learn anything [...]

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  • heart

    Gameness

    November 6th, 2010 | Reviews | Jack Donovan | Comments Off

    On Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart. (Originally published on The Spearhead, Nov. 2009) The first hundred pages of Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart made me want to pack it in and take up needlepoint. After graduating from high school, Sheridan joined the Merchant Marines, went to Harvard to study art, sailed around the world as [...]

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