The American Spectator

This review appeared in the June 2006 issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, click here.

p> strong> Manliness br> by Harvey C. Mansfield br> (Yale University Press, 304 pages, $27.50) /strong> /p>

THE DEFINITION OF SHEER JOY is the reaction of a conservative on learning that a book entitled Manliness has just been published.

As soon as I heard about it I began churning out promotional copy in my head: “From the 300 Spartans to the men of the Titanic…. What women REALLY want: ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.’”

Next, I mentally wrote the jacket copy.

“…that prototype of self-discipline, the Color Sergeant in Zulu.”

“…warfare as minuet: the polished courtesies observed by gentlemen officers Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens in The Enemy Below.”

“…the mutual respect that springs up between the hunted white man and his African pursuers when he wins the test of manliness in The Naked Prey.”

“…the chivalric ideal displayed at West Point in 1861 when cadets from Union states presented arms as their Southern classmates marched off the field to the strains of ‘Dixie.’”