Manhood on the Line: Working-Class Masculinities in the American Heartland. By Stephen Meyer

Abstract

Many of us who work on gender, labor, and automotive history have benefitted from Stephen Meyer’s work and have been anxiously awaiting this new book, Manhood on the Line: Working-Class Masculinities in the American Heartland. Meyer’s smart, insightful, readable book was worth the wait. It provides an in-depth exposition and analysis of the varieties of working-masculinity in the automobile industry, primarily in the region in and around Detroit, Michigan, throughout the first half of the twentieth century (a concluding chapter addresses the second half of the twentieth century). Meyer is interested in the ways men constructed and expressed working-class masculinity as a result of their experiences in the workplace and in working-class organizations. Meyer is sensitive to the impact that race, age, ethnicity, skill-level, and the passage of time had on masculinity. Central to his analysis is the distinction between “rough” and “respectable” male working-class culture. These existed simultaneously and were historically and socially contingent. The nuanced treatment of these dichotomous expressions of masculinities is one of the strengths and contributions of this book.