Part one : making and unmaking the gentleman
Four faces of civilization, c.1500-1750
Balancing acts : the paradox of the gentleman
Part two : male bodies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
The armor of health and the diseases of civilization
A diet of pleasures? : the incorporation of manhood
Building bodies : violence, pain and the nation
Part three : the twentieth century and beyond
Modern primitives : manhood and metamorphosis around 1900
Men of steel : technologies of the male body
The last men? : consuming manhood since 1945
Conclusion : the return of the repressed.