Books like Alexander's Bridge — picked by fans

Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, was not, he said, “a book about what is, but a book about what could be.” Further, “it is mostly about managers and engineers” and more precisely, about automation and what American society could become if machines took over work, and labor, as we have known it, was made redundant. His imagined city of Illium was socially and physically split between the managers and engineers of its industrial plant and the former workers had been displaced by automation and now led meaningless lives of busy work provided by the government. The engineer Paul Proteus becomes disaffected and joins in a revolution being plotted against the new order. They succeed, but soon realize that the people of Illium were “already eager to recreate the same old nightmare.” The logic of the machine continued its sway.

I like that you have to watch Vonnegut carefully.… show more.

It is hardly news that housework is gendered. But in this classic study Cowan, by taking housewifery seriously as work and kitchen utensils and appliances seriously as technologies, opens up the whole panorama of production and consumption in a domestic setting. The influx of new appliances, and in a more convenient form old materials (such as powdered soap) in the early decades of the 20th century worked to, in a sense, “industrialize” the home. Unlike factory workers, however, housewives were unpaid, isolated, and unspecialized. Their managerial role shrank (hired help disappeared from most homes) and rather than being drained of meaning, like the work of factory hands, theirs became burdened with portentous implications of love, devotion, and creativity. Finally, as housework became “easy,” standards rose. At one time changing the bed might have amounted to putting the bottom sheet in the wash and the top sheet on the bottom,… show more.

My admiration for this book is demonstrated by the way in which I quite shamelessly ripped off its title for my own. It has been said that America is the only nation that began perfect and hoped to improve. The engine of that improvement, from the earliest days of the Republic, had been new technologies but by the middle of the pre-Civil War period some Americans began to realize that the “improvement” they had unleashed was beginning to erode the very “perfection” that they had hoped to enshrine in the nation’s foundation. Writers, artists, and creative intellectuals in general are society’s canaries in the mine shaft, and the great names of the American Renaissance—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, George Innes, Charles Sheeler, and their colleagues—attempted to describe, understand, and perhaps heal the destructive effects of the machine. As Marx concludes, “what was a grim possibility… show more.

Adler demonstrates that the lie detector is a rather simple machine, "a banal assemblage of medical technologies" (as he calls it) to measure blood pressure and perspiration, that has been widely used in America since its appearance between the wars. It was purported to sort out lies from the truth but the science behind it ranged from junk to speculative, and its evidence has never been accepted in courts of law. It has not been used anywhere else in the world, and Adler concludes that it “belonged to [the]…American strain of the Enlightenment project to replace personal discretion with science.” As he shows however, personal discretion, in practice, lay at the very heart of its use and popularity. It was no doubt more humane than the “third degree” so commonly used by police to obtain confessions, but it was a machine that manufactured something less than the Truth.

This book explores how ideas of manhood have evolved, from ancient ideals of dominance to modern-day uncertainties. While the Enlightenment challenged traditional masculinity, the 19th century brought it roaring back through nationalism. In the 20th century, pacifist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ movements chipped away at these old codes, revealing a more fragile, unsettled sense of virility.

Now, we’re seeing a sharp pushback. Trump’s rise, Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, and the global surge in populism all draw on a nostalgic, aggressive vision of masculinity. This book helps make sense of the cultural roots behind today’s political shifts, showing that the struggle over manhood is also a geopolitical struggle over power.

This book is a classic in the realm of masculinity.

Women sometimes say that they want their partner to ‘be a man’ or to be ‘more masculine.’ What do they mean by this, exactly? What makes a man hot? Why do some men make our panties drop while others leave us cold?

In this book, David Deida examines the mechanics of masculine sex-appeal and invites men to move beyond the stereotypes that are traditionally assigned to them. He challenges men to reclaim their balls, find their purpose, and gain mastery in life. By learning how to handle the “big lady” (life), you can more easily create deeper, fulfilling relationships with the “small lady” (your beloved partner).

Often viewed as the fraternity counterpart to Turk’s history of sororities, this book chronicles the rise of white fraternities on college campuses, with a specific focus on the role that these organizations play in the construction of American masculinity.

What do fraternities have in common with freemasonry? What was their role during Prohibition and the Civil Rights Movement? How and why did hazing rituals start—and why are they often sexual?

This book is chock full of lightbulb moments that will make everything about contemporary fraternity culture make so much more sense.

Better than any other study on filibustering, Amy Greenberg treats it through the lens of gender, and she is particularly interested in public opinion about filibustering. Mass rallies in support of filibuster invasions of Cuba and Central America occurred in U.S. cities in the 1850s, providing funds, recruits, and moral support for criminal enterprises. What did gender have to do with who approved of filibustering, and who didn’t? What did filibustering have to do with ideas about what constituted proper masculinity? Did women participate in filibustering in any way, and did images of exoticized women in other parts of the world affect the attitudes of male filibusters?

Greenberg uses a fascinating variety of sources, including cartoons, poetry, travel accounts, and artwork, to convey the ambience of the filibustering world. Intriguingly, she both links and differentiates what she found about U.S. expansionist initiatives in Latin America before the Civil War to… show more.

A recognized classic, and one of the first books to bring gender theory, masculinity studies, and the new cultural history to the academic study of dueling. Nye looks at French dueling in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a manifestation of evolving ideals and norms of masculine honor, at a time when France was becoming less aristocratic and more bourgeois. This is the book that first convinced me that dueling could be a legitimate topic for serious historical research, and not just some quirky random sideshow.

Satires are mostly identified with laughter and larger-than-life figures moving in equally absurd settings with this… theatrical tone used to amplify, highlight very real issues. But satirical novels also demand change. Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Adjustment Day, is both fun and challenging, and expertly executed. 

What is it about? A mysterious blue-black book carries directives leading to an “Adjustment Day.” It is shared among private circles, triggering a countdown to an earth-shattering schism. 

Brilliant, layered, and complex, a must-read: a nightmarish vision of our twisted and fractured societal body.