American Men

A deeply intimate portrait of the lives of four men that examines—in profound and comprehensive ways—what it means to be a man in America.

Men wield outsized power across all major institutions. But they are falling behind across all measures of well-being and success. They include loving husbands and absent fathers, corporate strivers and displaced workers, the objects and instruments of incredible violence. They are half the population. And yet when mentioned as a bloc, it’s often to ask the question: What’s wrong with them?

American Men is a book that burrows deep into the lives of four men, exploring how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time. They include Ryan, an amateur MMA fighter from the Akwesasne Mohawk territory, 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 white masculine ideal; Joseph, a Seattle law student whose marriage teeters on the brink of turmoil as he tries on his own to contend with the effects of childhood sexual trauma; and Nate, a young 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. Written with searing intimacy after five years of reporting, American Men interweaves their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.

Jordan Ritter Conn is the author of The Road From Raqqa: A Story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a Senior Staff Writer for The Ringer and the host of the narrative podcasts What If: The Len Bias Story and Sonic Boom, named by The Atlantic as one of the best podcasts of 2019. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his family.