"Absorbing, well-argued, and finely written."--Nicola Shulman, Sunday Times, London

In the first cross-cultural study of manhood as an achieved status, anthropologist David D. Gilmore finds that a culturally sanctioned stress on manliness--on toughness and aggressiveness, stoicism and sexuality--is almost universal, deeply ingrained in the consciousness of hunters and fishermen, workers and warriors, poets and peasants who have little else in common.