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New Men: Manliness in Early America. Ed. by Thomas A. Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2011. xii, 281 pp. Cloth, $75.00, isbn 978-0-8147-2780-5. Paper, $24.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-2781-2.)
New Men contains a dozen essays on masculinity in British America from the seventeenth century through the early republic. Thomas A. Foster's brief introduction summarizes the field, Mary Beth Norton's preface offers an accessible endorsement, and Toby L. Ditz provides a sustained intellectual analysis of the volume's contribution to masculinity and feminist studies in her afterword.
Anne Marie Plane and Foster employ personal writings to decode colonial constructions of manliness. Planes sophisticated analysis shows how the dreams of seventeenth-century New England men revealed underlying Puritan tensions over masculine achievement, pride, and rational control. Foster smardy traces how sexual behavior featured in John Adams's...