Masculinity in the modern west : gender, civilization and the body / Christopher E. Forth.

Includes index.

Part 1. Making and unmaking the gentleman -- Four faces of civilization, c.1530-1750 -- Balancing acts : the paradox of the gentleman -- Part 2. Male bodies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- The armor of health and the diseases of civilization -- A diet of pleasures? : the incorporation of manhood -- Building bodies : violence, pain and the nation -- Part 3. The twentieth century and beyond -- Modern primitives : manhood and metamorphosis around 1900 -- Men of steel : technologies of the male body -- The last men? : consuming manhood since 1945 -- Conclusion: the return of the repressed.