“This is a feminist book about political theory, but it is not a book about women.” Such is the opening line of political theorist Wendy Brown's classic book, Manhood and Politics. Brown's innovative thesis remains relevant and crucial today: political life itself is the effect of the patriarchalism that built it. A sphere not simply exclusive to men, but often formulated as a domain for realizing manhood, Western political life continues to bear a masculinist ethos and ontology. With authoritarianism on the rise, tech bros calling for more “masculine energy,” and the existential threat of ecological disaster, the insights in this book are especially timely.

An interpretation of the works of three giants of classical political theory constitutes the main body of Manhood and Politics: Aristotle, who proclaimed man a political animal who finds his freedom beyond embodiment, necessity, and nature; Machiavelli, who depicted virtù-masculine cunning and strength-as the means to dominate fortuna-the goddess of chance and contingency; and Max Weber, who called for heroic politicians to retrieve nation-state glory from the maw of bureaucratic rationalization. In lucid and pedagogical readings of each thinker, Brown teases out the implications of these formulations and sets the stage for another kind of politics, one that affirms and nourishes life rather than struggling against it and its predicates.

A new generation of scholars, students, and activists will benefit immensely from this pathbreaking work.