In this surprising, candid cultural analysis, Susan Bordo begins with a frank, tender look at her own father's body and goes on to perceptively scrutinize the presentation of maleness in everyday life. Men's (and women's) ideas about men's bodies are heavily influenced by society's expectations, and Bordo helps us understand where those ideas come from. In chapters on the penis (in all its incarnations), fifties Hollywood, male beauty standards, and sexual harassment, and in discussions of topics ranging from Marlon Brando and Boogie Nights to Philip Roth and Lady Chatterley's Lover, Bordo offers fresh and unexpected insights. Always -- whether she is examining Michael Jordan or Humbert Humbert, the butch phallus or her own grade-school experiences -- she rejects rigid categories in favor of an honest, nuanced version of men as flesh-and-blood human beings.

Past Continuous is a brilliant tour de force, a Joycean panorama of the lives of three men, their families, their lovers, and their friends in the quintessentially modern city of Tel Aviv. It is as much a novel about Tel Aviv-its landscape, its idiosyncratic atmosphere, and its history-as it is about the human condition.

"Mild and sensitive Richard Hieck endured a quietly difficult childhood in Germany. Raised in humble circumstances, Richard was profoundly influenced by his withdrawn mother and by his father, an enigma whose devotion centered not on his five children but on his mysterious career. From his father, Richard inherited an interest in the night sky, learning to love the constellations and to take comfort in the strength of Orion and the warm radiance of Venus. Richard's shadowy, elusive father also influenced him to pursue studies in mathematics, a field offering Richard the discipline he had craved as a child." "Published in 1933, The Unknown Quantity is Hermann Broch's study of the underlying chaos - and, finally, the impossibility - of life within a society whose values are in decay. As Richard seeks to reconcile the conflicting demands of love and science, of passion and reason, societal and family values begin to undermine him and those in orbit around him." --Book Jacket.