Masculine Identities: The History and Meanings of Manliness

This book provides an intriguing look at the long history of the changing definitions of what it means to "be a man," identifying both the continuity and disparity in these ideals and explaining the contemporary crisis of masculinity.

In the classical Athens of Plato and Pericles, erotic relations between adolescents and adult men—what we now revile as pedophilia—was the marker of manliness; a clear example of how concepts of masculinity shift. Even within modern western society, there are c...