Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation. By Lorri Glover. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xii, 250 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8018-8498-6.)

In this thought-provoking study of men who came of age in the slaveholding South between 1790 and 1830, Lorri Glover explores the parameters of elite southern masculinity, traces the sometimes rocky path from boyhood to manhood, and calls our attention to the connections between family life and political culture. Indeed, she suggests, elite southern parents' attempts to create “self willed” sons succeeded only too well, producing a generation of men who felt entitled to privilege, hostile to authority, and compelled to defend their honor (p. 23). Young men such as John Palmer—a South Carolina College student who “demanded satisfaction” from the college president in response to being disciplined for drunkenness, insubordination, and assault—learned both at home and at school that “southern men made their own rules” (pp. 106, 63). It should come as no surprise, argues Glover, that this generation would ultimately reject not only the authority of parents, teachers, and college presidents but also the authority of the United States of America.