‘Manufactured’ Masculinity

(This book is) a substantial body of stylish writings that merit special attention. If ever there was a prose style so completely fitted to the subject – a muscular prose not without sympathy, a strong voice not without unexpected sentiment, a direct message but one that appreciates cultural complexity – here it is for all of us to note and enjoy.

Professor Sheldon Rothblatt, University of California at Berkeley, USA

The articles that were collected and presented in the special issue offer fresh materials and further arguments that significantly extend many of the themes that Professor Mangan has developed in the corpus of his work...the students find my assignments of Professor Mangan’s work to be among the most enjoyable and instructive of all the readings.

Professor William W. Kelly, Yale University, USA

Published together these articles become a most appreciated source for generations of future scholars interested in how gender roles, military preparations, imperial strategies, educational practices and ideological indoctrination have been, and are indeed increasingly, intertwined in most human societies. Put differently, J. A. Mangan wrote global history decades before it became a catchword among fashionable academics.

Professor Henrik Meinander, University of Helsinki, Finland

This collection is so rich, so wide-ranging and so intellectually valuable that it deserves additional publication in book form. It would undoubtedly benefit the world of scholarship.

Professor Jeffrey Richards, Lancaster University, UK

The topic of this book goes far beyond the history of sport. It is a contribution to gender-history as well as to cultural, social and philosophical anthropology. It also covers central questions of... the history of philosophical ideas.

Professor Dr. Ingomar Weiler (Retired), Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz, Austria

(Professor Mangan’s) pre-eminence in the study of... sports and masculinity is undeniable, just as undeniable as (his) pre-eminence in the study of sports and imperialism. If Taylor and Francis publish the issue as a hardcover book, it will be a great service to scholars and to "general readers"... Quite a triumphant swansong!

Professor Allen Guttmann, Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA

Although much has been written on this and associated topics this book serves exceedingly well as a compendium that embraces the whole spectrum under one cover.

Dr. Frank Galligan, British Society of Sports History, UK

As is common with J.A. Mangan’s work, the book is extremely well written and draws upon his own work as well as that of the diverse pens of others such as J.A. Hobson, J.O. Springhall, E.C. Mack, Thomas Hughes and Alec Waugh and more recently, James Walvin, John Hoberman and John Lowerson – to mention but a few.

Dr. Frank Galligan, British Society of Sports History, UK

Mangan pulls no punches and tells it as it was: ‘sans polishing’.

Dr. Frank Galligan, British Society of Sports History, UK

All in all this book provides a valuable resource for the academic, the student and anyone interested in the place of the public school and its sports field in creating that form of ‘maleness’ that was peculiar to those times. It is however, not just a sports history text. Yes, it addresses and analyses the place of sport in the public and independent schools of Imperial Britain but it will also serve the social, political, religious, educational and cultural historian just as well.

Dr. Frank Galligan, British Society of Sports History, UK

Manufactured Masculinity is the rich fruit of…years of further work and it shows Mangan developing his original insights and interpretations in many different and rewarding directions.

Professor Jeffrey Richards, Lancaster University, UK

The volume…highlights the qualities which have always characterized Mangan’s scholarship: the wide-ranging, in-depth research, the subtle and nuanced analysis, the vigorous argument and the palpable passion for his subject which leads him to lambast such eminent scholars as John MacKenzie, David Cannadine and Norman Davies for their cultural myopia in overlooking the vital role of the games cult in the political, social, cultural and emotional history both of modern Europe and the British Empire.

Professor Jeffrey Richards, Lancaster University, UK