Anxious Men

Anxious Men is an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship concerned with American masculinity as Baldwin explores how “diverse, contradictory, conflicted and contested” it is during the 1940s and 1950s (235). The legacy of the Depression and the Second World War created a crisis over what constituted a masculine identity, which, as Baldwin investigates, led to conservatism and rebellion. The array of masculine representations explored in the study, from office workers to cowboys, soldiers, queer representations, and minority perspectives, provides evidence of how rich and diverse contradictions were to constructions of the masculine gender during the early Cold War era. -- Georgia Woodroffe, University of Exeter * Journal of American Studies *
Anxious Men cogently underscores the inherent contradictions and impossible expectations attached to American masculinity in the twentieth century, and highlights the challenges faced by authors who sought to fashion alternatives to the hegemonic model. -- Maggie McKinley, Harper College * Men and Masculinities *
Examining a range of early Cold War US novels, Baldwin’s book represents a timely discussion of the fashioning of male subjectivities and roles through imagined narratives. In an era where disguised insecurities of gender dominate our politics, this will prove a suggestive contribution to a debate in which all our futures are implicated. -- Ben Knights, Teesside University