“Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men”
An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self
Stephen Mansfield and William Boykin
Nelson Books – 2013

Summary

New York Times best-selling author Stephen Mansfield uses manly maxims, mini-biographies, and stirring illustrations to inspire men to evaluate their lives, raise their standards, and embrace their God-given masculine identity.

Review

This book is not only easy to read but incredibly inspirational. It’s not a rah-rah masculine grunt-fest, but a well thought out, well-researched, well written, discussion of what it means to be a godly man. The stories don’t merely centre around athletes and war veterans (as some men’s books do), but gives a much broader understanding of what it means to be male by including men of all stripes – intellectuals, peacemakers, politicians and biblical figures.

The book itself is broken into three parts:

Part 1: “The Manly Maxims”, four personal mottos that help summarize the masculine life. This is a helpful baseline for the meat of the book in part 2.

Part 2: “Show Yourself A Man”, a list of attributes (ex. Honor, Blessing, Wildness, Integrity, etc.) that combine a mish-mosh of bible studies, biographies and personal stories which are not only fascinating to read but immensely instructive and inspirational. This is the best part of the book!

Part 3: A resource section with quotable quotes, movie and book recommendations. Not my favourite part, but I can see how some guys would like this.

Conclusion

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read some great stories and be challenged and inspired (I keep using that word) to rise above the watering down of the masculine identity. I’m sure there are some people who would be upset by the fact that this book targets men, but I think it’s great that there is a book like this that I can give to my teen boys to help them set a high standard for their personal conduct and walk with God.

*I received this book for free from BookLook Bloggers for review.