Among men

In "Among Men", Tobin Siebers grapples with what it means to be male.

Juxtaposing a variety of genres, from memoir to meditation to miniature story, "Among Men" portrays the extremes of male identity and how the struggle to be a man involves confronting those extremes.

The tone is personal, the subject matter timely and contemporary.

In an age when it has become difficult to generalize about maleness, Siebers's challenge is to discover in his own life truths about the lives of men in general.

Here are men consumed by the precision of work and the ferocity of drinking, cowards who dream of bravery, and heroes who lose their lives because they cannot be weak.

Siebers confesses his own anger and lust and wonders how to retain his power as a man while becoming kinder and more worthy of love. "Among Men" is not a male manifesto. At turns moving, funny, poignant, and haunting, it is an insightful diary about things male, about how men think, about fathers, brothers, and sons, about love and lust, and about talking man to man.

Tobin Siebers is a professor of English at the University of Michigan. He is the author of many books, including "Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism" and "The Ethics of Criticism."