Rating: 
Summary: Life-changing
Review: This book was a watershed for me. I was an extremely frustrated boy of 31 years and couldn't even begin to figure out why until I read this book.
The first third of this book should be required reading for all men, especially fathers. I didn't get as much out of the rest of the book until I read it again. Even then, the real power of the book is in the first six chapters.
This book along with Robert Bly's Iron John have been the two major catalysts for my movement into manhood.
Rating:
Summary: Life-changing
Review: This book was a watershed for me. I was an extremely frustrated boy of 31 years and couldn't even begin to figure out why until I read this book.
The first third of this book should be required reading for all men, especially fathers. I didn't get as much out of the rest of the book until I read it again. Even then, the real power of the book is in the first six chapters.
This book along with Robert Bly's Iron John have been the two major catalysts for my movement into manhood.
Rating: 
Summary: THE book for those who sincerely seek a deeper understanding
Review: This book was recommended to me by a very wise man. It is definitely only for those who SINCERELY seek a deeper understanding of what it is to be an AUTHENTIC human. It is geared toward men who, for too long, have suffered under an illusion of dominance, and as a result, have paid the high price of alienation from who they really are. Those few who gave a negative review are obviously too deep into their own delusion to see the value in authenticity. Should be mandatory reading for every male at age 20, 30 and again at 40!
Rating:
Summary: Well written, profoundly deep, missing nothing
Review: What tells us we are men? Is it how we look on the outside? Is it the way we behave? Unfortunately, if you are looking for these questions, you might as well go away now, for this book is not meant to be read by ideologues who think they need an idea to know.We have all tread the mass of upgrades to our lives called "women," hopping from one to the next without fulfillment. Some of us have also played the nice guy/poindexter role into night and day until our wallets broke and then we were left without anything. We have tried to be male in so many different ways, but there is one that outshines them all. It is the one that lies above the grave of impossibility. In his excellent and thorough essay, Keen urges us at the end of the first chapter not to skirt through the book but to read carefully each passage. We've been stranded for too long on a desolate island, asking for attention. Our hearts and minds have been callously stupefied by our advances, and by our society and time, which have been of no help to us at all. Being manly doesn't mean we necessarily have to exaggerate our strength in order to *look* like a man. Instead, the prayer is that we might express something greater within ourselves and not be afraid of how manly we look to others. One of the first things we must do, Sam says, is to challenge our misconceptions about WOMAN. This is "WOMAN" with all caps. She's the undying witch who comes to scare us, night after night, after we have fallen asleep. The little boy who fears the witch is still there has not left us, for we have not gotten over our very private concerns about who She is. The quintessential journey into the heart, for a man, starts at the place where he begins to accept the uncertainty of his maleness. Beyond this, he has always an abundance of tools and source material to solve his ordinary problems in everyday ways, and if he can play up to the mastery of this experience he will eventually become a man. In chapter ten, Keen writes about this, telling us a quote by Martin Luther: "Our good is hidden, and so profoundly that it is hidden under its opposite. Thus our life is under death, love of ourselves under hate of ourselves, glory under ignominy, salvation under perdition, justice under sin, strength under infirmity, and universally every one of our affirmations under its negation." Indeed, our strength does come from its opposite. If we are to escape past the predicaments that have held us in and reveal the secret knots that we have tied, not only for ourselves, but for our love of the world, then we must undertake the questor's journey into the root of the darkness. Are we men or are we not? Read on...
Rating:
Summary: Great, but Poderous Intoduction
Review: Wonderful Book. A bit disjointed. It takes Keen two chapters to establish guit. But the rest of it is worth the effort. It is a good read. And it has some shocking answers for us that are "Still Looking"
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