Francoise Sagan once said ""Men have more problems than women. In the first place, they have to put up with women."" Myron...

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THE AMERICAN MALE

Francoise Sagan once said ""Men have more problems than women. In the first place, they have to put up with women."" Myron Brenton doesn't go that far but the fact that women have been CULT-ivating their mystique, and that this is the first book about the male, will support the notion that the second sex has become dominant. Brenton has assembled this book via a good deal of comparison shopping-- interviews, studies, the general literature from Riesman to a Playboy panel. Necessarily much of it is reversible and he also attempts to do away with stereotypes. The consensus however seems to be that the American male feels trapped and would have been happier fifty years ago. He's too uninvolved at home and often inadequate in the bedroom. Loss of ego, status, sexual identity are examined; so is his performance as husband, as father, as lover (statistics show women think most highly of him as a breadwinner); and Brenton, fair to both sides, maintains that the beleaguered male must respond to the ""challenge"" of the egalitarian marriage.... Drawing from so many sources, a good deal slips away in an is-you-is or is-you-ain't fashion. It's not quite the ""social criticism"" it aims to be more of a magazine level appraisal with a bi-sexual appeal.

Pub Date: July 29, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1966

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