Skip to content

Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States

Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States Hardcover - 2009 - 1st Edition

by John Gilbert McCurdy

  • Used
  • Hardcover

Description

Cornell University Press, 2009. hardcover. Good +/None as issued. 6x1x9. Used hardcover copy from university bookstore, with expected stickers and stamps. Clean, solid copy with a very small amount of underlined text. Cover has mild surface and edge wear, no jacket. Binding is tight and square. Multiple copies. Books that sell for $9 or more ship in a box; under $9 in a bubble mailer. Expedited and international orders may ship in a flat rate envelope rather than a box due to cost constraints. All US-addressed items ship with complimentary delivery confirmation.
Used - Good +
NZ$40.16
NZ$11.22 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 7 to 14 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from Lake Country Books and More (Minnesota, United States)
The BIBLIO Guarantee | Ask Seller a Question

About Lake Country Books and More Minnesota, United States

Specializing in: Art, Business, Children's Books, Cooking, Counseling, Therapy, And Self-Help, History, Minnesota, Religion, Scholarly Works
Biblio member since 2006
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

Lake Country Books offers a wide variety of out of print, current, and antiquarian books. We continuously add new inventory, and welcome special orders and search requests for titles we may not currently have in stock. Customers have consistently complimented us on our prompt shipping and quality packaging. All books ship in a museum-quality, acid-free plastic sleeve as an inner wrap. Books over $7 ship bubble wrapped and boxed; books under $7 ship in a bubble mailer. All our items ship with delivery confirmation.

Terms of Sale:

All orders ship from our location within 2 business days, and most within 24 hours. Returns will be accepted on any item returned to us within 7 days of buyer's receipt of their order. Items returned due to an error on our part, including, but not limited to, errors and/or omissions in the listing description, or shipment of the incorrect item, will be refunded for the full amount of the item, including shipping. Items returned due to an error on the buyer's part, buyer's remorse, or a cancellation request after the item has shipped, will be refunded for the purchase amount of the item less a 10% restocking fee. There will be no refund for shipping in these cases. Refunds will be issued within 2 business days of receipt of the item when it is received back in the same condition it was in when originally shipped. Adjustments to refunds, up to 100% of the cost of the item, will be made for returns damaged in shipment due to improper packaging, removal of shrink wrap from new items if it was present when shipped, and/or damage or wear to the item while it was in the possession of the buyer.

Browse books from Lake Country Books and More

Details

  • Title Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States
  • Author John Gilbert McCurdy
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Condition Used - Good +
  • Pages 282
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Cornell University Press
  • Date 2009
  • Features Bibliography, Dust Cover, Index, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # GB62304110009
  • ISBN 9780801447884 / 0801447887
  • Weight 1.15 lbs (0.52 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 in (22.86 x 15.49 x 2.29 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 17th Century
    • Chronological Period: 18th Century
    • Sex & Gender: Masculine
  • Library of Congress subjects United States - Social life and customs - To, United States - Social life and customs -
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2008045803
  • Dewey Decimal Code 306.815

From the publisher

In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed "a man without a wife is but half a man" and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship.

In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences. At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society.

Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.

Categories

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 02/01/2010, Page 0

About the author

John Gilbert McCurdy is Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University.

Hang on… we’re fetching the requested page.