Books by Phyllis Chesler

About Men by Phyllis Chesler Simon & Schuster, 1978. 281 pp. March 15, 1978

Praise:

"Psychologically voluptuous, it plunges through the bloody underbrush of male-male relationships... insisting that we look at men with fresh and fearless eyes."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"Can a woman be trusted to comment objectively on the male condition? Since men for ten thousand years have defined womanhood, it is about time (before it is too late) that a balancing perspective emerged. Phyllis Chesler has provided just that with a brilliance and erudition equal to the task. She is our Tocqueville."
--Dr. Robert Seidenberg

"I am stunned by the brilliance and daring of this book. I think Phyllis Chesler has written what may well become a classic. The writing is beautiful; the profundity of the thought behind it reminds me of the work of Jung, and the bravery of a woman writing about men fills me with awe. This book will raise many hackles; it will be hotly debated, but it will not be ignored."
--Erica Jong

"Phyllis Chesler's book About Men brilliantly and poetically presents the masculine experience in political, prophetic and mythological terms—and thus allows us to see it clearly for the first time… Chesler has a unique, and startlingly truthful, view of men and the cultural prices they are forced to pay—largely by other men. Only a woman could have written this important book, the first feminist work to take men seriously, psychologically, without stereotyping them."
--Gloria Steinem

"This book takes a long close look at the male scene in the present and in recent European history. It depicts a sad and sorry tale, vividly and compellingly… This salutary reading is at moments greatly painful, but also hilarious, if a sense of humor has not been lost."
--R.D. Laing

"If you want to experience what 'man'kind has done to humankind—read this book. It is a remarkable, important and crucial book, especially for men who want to understand the nature and consequences of male-male relationships. Poetically and thoughtfully, Phyllis Chesler begins to resurrect our buried collective unconsciousness about the male experience. What she says about pornography, homosexuality and male uterus envy should be quoted everywhere."
--Reza Baraheni, author of The Crowned Cannibals

"Chesler is a revisionist psychologist, a careful scholar, a metaphoric poet. She does not spare herself or her relationships to bring evidence to bear in the section on fathers and lovers. This piercing, prophetic book is written in a large and organic form to encompass the documented, the autobiographical, the interviews and data. For once, art is used to brilliantly illuminate myth."
--E.M. Broner, author of Her Mothers