Manliness. By Harvey C. Mansfield. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 304p. $27.50.

Harvey Mansfield gives the book to us, in the first instance, as a response to feminism. Feminism, he argues, has sought to erase all differences between the genders, a project which must ultimately fail, for those differences are founded in nature. Feminism has succeeded, however, in diminishing the value and suppressing the practice of the virtue of manliness. The author sets himself the task of restoring that virtue.