Introduction: The de-evolutionary turn in U.S. masculinity
Darwin and evolutionary psychology, then and now
John Dewey, Pierre Bourdieu, and masculinity as a habit of mind
"The caveman within us" and the masculinist culture of mimicry
Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis: Origins, composition, and meanings
Turner's influence on the social psychology of the city
Radical individualism: Masculinist art, angst, and alienation in the city
Dudism, cowgirl feminism, and the search for authenticity in the "old west"
The American literary genre of hunting and killing
Reading for plot: Call of the Wild, The Virginian, and the new male readership
Irony, atavism, and other variations on the de-evolutionary theme
Thorstein Veblen and the rise of "exotic ferocity" in American college football
Victor Turner, Stanford football, and hypermasculine liminal subjects
Clifford Geertz at the big game: "Thick description" of football as the cultural equivalent of war
Civil war memory, blood sacrifice, and modern American fighting spirit
Of Rough Riders, blood brothers, and Roosevelt the Berserker
War as sport for Doughboys, golden boys, and slackers
Postscript: Marine Corps spirit and the U.S. warrior class, 1941-2003
5. Laws of sexual selection
Race, lynch law, and the manly provocation
Marriage, cultural defense in The People v. Chen, and the heart-of-passion defense in Texas
Compulsory heterosexuality, the Charles Atlas Muscle-Beach fable, and sexual dimorphism unbound
Epilogue: Irony, instinct, and war
Irony, Sam Fussell's Muscle, and masculinity as a "parodic tableau vivant"
Instinct, deep masculinity, and the decline of males
The Iraq War, hypermasculinity, and the metaphor of disease.
