Bring Me Men: Military Masculinity and the Benign Façade of American Empire, 1898-2001 (Columbia/Hurst)

The masculinity of those who serve in the American military would seem to beindisputable, yet it is full of contradictions. To become a warrior, one must renouncethose things in life that are perceived to be unmasculine. Yet at the same time, themilitary has encouraged and even mandated warriors to do exactly the opposite.

Bring Me Men explores these contradictions in great detail and shows that theirinvisibility has been central to the concealment of American empire's darkest secrets.By examining case studies that expose these contradictions -- the phenomenon of maleon-male rape at the U.S. Naval Academy, for example, as well as historical and contemporaryattitudes toward cleanliness and filth -- Belkin utterly upends our understanding of the relationship between warrior masculinity, American empire and the fragile processes sustaining it.