Synopses & Reviews
Despite popular belief, American boys tag behind girls in reading and writing ability, and they are less likely to go to college. Our young men are greatly at risk, yet the best-known studies and experts insist that it's girls who are in need of our attention. The highly publicized "girl crisis" has led to many changes in American schools, politics, and parenting...but at what cost?
In this provocative book, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that our society has continued to overemphasize the troubles of girls while our boys suffer from the same self-esteem and academic problems. Boys need help, but not the sort of help they've been getting.
Review
Danielle Crittenden New York Post In Christina Hoff Sommers's splendid new book...she shows the damage that is being done to our sons by adults determined to stop them from being, well, boys.
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Marilyn Gardner The Christian Science Monitor Provocative and controversial...Sommers's voice is impassed and articulate.
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Richard Bernstein The New York Times The burden of [this] thoughtful, provocative book is that it is American boys who are in trouble, not girls. Ms. Sommers... makes these arguments persuasively and unflinchingly, with plenty of data to support them.
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Mary Eberstadt The Washington Times This book promises to launch and influence an enduring national debate....The author trains her empirical and polemical skills on an issue of demonstrable and often poignant urgency.
About the Author
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise institute in Washington, D.C. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brandeis University and was formerly a professor of philosophy at Clark University. Sommers has written for numerous publications and is the author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. She is married with two sons and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface
ONE Where the Boys Are
TWO Reeducating the Nation's Boys
THREE Guys and Dolls
FOUR Carol Gilligan and the Incredible Shrinking Girl
FIVE Gilligan's Island
SIX Save the Males
SEVEN Why Johnny Can't, Like, Read and Write
EIGHT The Moral Life of Boys
NINE War and Peace
Notes
Index