Manhood as my grandfather embodied it, notwithstanding his Iranian and Muslim background, is an ideal that should be familiar to many Americans, at least those of an older generation: that of the self-sacrificial “man’s man,” who quietly endures life’s burdens for his family and neighborhood, whose toughness lies not in the spread of his tattoos but in the depth of his love—and who expresses that love not with saccharine words, but in decisive action.
It is the ideal celebrated by Sen. Josh Hawley in his moving and well-conceived new book, Manhood. The book’s necessity is self-evident. America, as Hawley amply shows in painful anecdotes and even more painful statistics, is suffering—among many other crises—a crisis of masculinity and fatherhood.
Read Full Article »