This book starts out with the affectation of being somehow applicable to "modern man." The author assumes modern men are "broken" and therefore must somehow be "fixed," and he offers his advice on how to go about being "A Real Man." Therefore this book will appeal chiefly to boys and men who feel inadequate as males and men; the same men who buy Hummers and/or guns and/or beat women and abuse children to compensate for their wan manhood (real or perceived).

The author portrays modern man as the victim to changing male roles. While this is true for some boys and men, it is by no means a universal trait. Any man who follows the dictates of his conscience and sense of honor and valor will know intrinsically what his role in life is; he will also find this book insulting and absurd.

Mentoring a boy and young man is a good thing; however, a young man must know when to slay his father and become a man himself. The danger of mentoring is that of the "alpha male" mentality taking over and running a boy's or young man's life to his detriment: when that occurs, cultist mentality takes over. (A good, and frightening, example of this is Robert Bly himself.) Taken too far, this mentality leads to horrors such as the People's Temple (Jim Jones and his mass murder-suicide), Heaven's Gate, Scientology, and a numberless other dangerous Follow-The-Leader mind-sets.

For those boys and men who feel they need such advice, a far superior book is "Fire in the Belly" by Sam Keen. It does not have the foreboding sense of victimization that "Iron John" does and it is far better thought-out as well as written.

David "Desertphile" Rice
Carson National Forest

Every man should read this book. While Bly may not be loved by many modern sociological and psychological theorists, what he offers is a persepctive different than those that have failed us in the past. Through the allegory of the Grimm Bros. Iron John, he suggests a more authentic masculinity that avoids both macho grandeur and feminine escapism.