American Men

AMERICAN MEN is a journalistic account of the lives of four men from vastly different backgrounds and experiences, charting how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time. The book searches the rarely-discussed crevices of men’s lives, chronicling traumas they’ve suffered and ways they’ve recovered, the ways they’ve both inflicted and survived violence, their relationships to sex and their own bodies, how they’ve wielded power and struggled with powerlessness, while trying to build families, friendships, and fuller relationships to themselves. 

The book’s protagonists include Ryan, an amateur MMA fighter who lives on a Mohawk reservation, struggling to come to terms with both his sexuality as a closeted gay man and his draw toward bar room violence; Gideon, an itinerant, tall and handsome West Point graduate and former baseball star who unravels when he encounters challenges to his status as the masculine ideal; Joseph, a Seattle law student whose marriage teeters on the brink as he tries on his own to contend with the effects of childhood sexual trauma; and Nate, an Ohio man still living at home and trying to establish security for himself in a rural pocket of a red state, where he’s under threat as someone who is Black, trans, and poor. The book draws from five years of interviewing these men and following them though their daily lives, interweaving their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.

• Jordan Ritter Conn’s American Men is a masterclass in empathetic storytelling. With profound sensitivity and unwavering curiosity, he brings us into the lives of men grappling with the silent pressures of masculinity. This is journalism that listens deeply and writes with a rare generosity of spirit.
  Gilbert King, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove.
• "A deeply immersive, intimate look into the lives of four men from vastly different backgrounds and experiences. Beautifully woven together, their stories reveal the current, confused state of American masculinity." 
  Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Barn