American Guy: Masculinity in
American Law and Literature
Edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum
Oxford University Press. 352 pages, $65.
MASCULINITY is a flexible enough concept, and America is a large enough country, that the essays in this collection cannot be reduced to a single dimension or formula. American Guy, edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, grew out of an academic conference of the law and literature movement, a subfield of legal scholarship that examines the law in and through literature, and is the third in a series of anthologies, following a volume on Shakespeare and another on the British novel, both also co-edited by Nussbaum.
The majority of the sixteen essays are by legal experts, among them six federal judges (one retired) and five law professors.