Description: A deeply intimate portrait of the lives of four men that examines--in profound and comprehensive ways--what it means to be a man in America.
Men wield outsized power across all major institutions. But they are falling behind across all measures of well-being and success. They include loving husbands and absent fathers, corporate strivers and displaced workers, the objects and instruments of incredible violence. They are half the population. And yet when mentioned as a bloc, it's often to ask the question: What's wrong with them?
American Men is a book that burrows deep into the lives of four men, exploring how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time. They include Ryan, an amateur MMA fighter from the Akwesasne Mohawk territory, struggling to come to terms with both his sexuality as a closeted gay man and his draw toward bar room violence; Gideon, an itinerant, tall and handsome West Point graduate and former baseball star who unravels when he encounters challenges to his status as the white masculine ideal; Joseph, a Seattle law student whose marriage teeters on the brink of turmoil as he tries on his own to contend with the effects of childhood sexual trauma; and Nate, a young Ohio man still living at home and trying to establish security for himself in a rural pocket of a red state, where he's under threat as someone who is Black, trans, and poor. Written with searing intimacy after five years of reporting, American Men interweaves their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.Review Quotes: "In American Men, Jordan Ritter Conn delivers a clear-eyed examination of masculinity amid our current moral and political crisis with careful reporting and exacting prose. I hope this book is held up as a critical example of what it means to be an American Man for many years to come--the stories of these four men, and Conn himself, will stay with me for the rest of my days."--Becca Andrews, author of No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Preserve a Fundamental American Right