| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 239 words from this article are provided below; about 553 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John F. Kasson. Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. New York: Hill and Wang. 2001. Pp. viii, 256. $26.00.

If middle-class, white American males of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries felt beleaguered, emasculated, and weakened by the social and economic transformations of their society, they had some accessible icons to provide them with means to overcome their plight. John F. Kasson identifies and imaginatively analyzes three popular figures: Eugen Sandow, Harry Houdini, and Tarzan, who together symbolized the strength, freedom, and superiority that helped create necessary new images of masculinity for the modern era. 1

Sandow, born in Prussia as Friedrich Wilhelm Muller, made the male body, and hence manhood, into performance art. From the early 1890s until his death in 1925, Sandow toured the United States and Great Britain displaying his nearly nude, muscular body and performing feats of strength in vaudeville and other entertainment venues. He also proselytized, insisting that his strength—and any man's strength—had to be achieved through strenuous yet scientific determination. Sandow demonstrated that a combination of body and will produced what Kasson calls a metamorphosis in a man that would reaffirm his masculinity in a time when men were losing respect. Sandow, says Kasson, not only inspired men to emulate his body but also aroused them almost erotically to possess it. . . .

There are about 553 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.