Manliness and Civilization is a classic Foucauldian study of the Discourse (capital D intended) around gender and race in the Progressive period. Bederman tracks a shift from a Victorian conception of manliness as based around self-restraint of urges to a more modern one of active and powerful sexuality, using case studies of anti-lynching activist Ida Wells, psychologist and educator G. Stanley Hall, feminist author and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and president Theodore Roosevelt, rounding out the detailed case studies with Black boxer Jack Johnson and the fictional character Tarzan.

Bederman's analysis shows that these three major themes of civilization, race, and masculinity, are impossible to separate. Civilization, the way not just in which we live now, but the better ways in which we intend to live tomorrow, as exemplified by the Chicago World's Fair, was tied up with the idea the civilization is a product of a biologically distinct racial universe. In the thinking of the times, Americans are the preeminent White Race, at the head of humanity as a whole, with a mission to civilize and lead the lesser races of the world. Civilization is a product of men primarily.

This book is at its best when it digs at the contradictions of the era's idea of civilization. The digressions on the deprecated mental illness neurasthenia, and how both Hall and Gilman struggled with it as individuals are fascinating stuff (though to be fair, also closest to my own scholarly interests). Wells, using the discourse of civilization to shame Americans about lynchings via the British press, is a fascinating ploy.

Unfortunately, the core case studies of the book don't quite connect, or at least don't make it beyond the first level. Once you accept that both Roosevelt and Gilman saw their political reforms in thoroughly racist frames, the racism is unsurprising. Whiteness is hoary nonsense, but extremely powerful hoary nonsense, and Bederman isn't critical enough.