Bruce Fleming is Professor of English at the US Naval Academy and is the author of Running is Life: Transcending the Crisis of Modernity, Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide and What Literary Studies Could Be, and What It Is.

Based on the author's experience of teaching young men at a military academy, this book rejects the vocabulary and presuppositions of discourses surrounding men and engages with the ways in which men understand themselves, seeking to address the gulf that exists between theoretical accounts of masculinity and men's own experiences.

Part I: Context and Method; 1. The Missing Piece; 2. Bottom Line Up Front; 3. Skin in the Game; Part II: Male Theory; 4. How Academics Get Men Wrong; 5. Gender; 6. Sexual Assault; 7. Situations; 8. Men and Porn; Part III: What Now?; 9. Becoming a Man