“The notion of manliness deserves some explanation to contemporary readers. In the twenty-first century, the word itself jars. We have become used to associating it with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Bond—with testosterone-induced displays of hypermasculinity, detached from any larger meaning. In contrast, nineteenth- century manliness was embedded in a republican moral tradition that emphasized honest labor and economic independence as well as devotion to family, community, and commonweal. This conception of manliness survived the Civil War, though by the 1880s it had begun to change in subtle ways. Manliness became less a condition to be cultivated than a goal to be pursued. It acquired a therapeutic dimension, reshaping the desire for revitalization into a lifelong project, sending men in search of new sites for self-testing, new frontiers. Here was a worldview suitable for an age of empire. Manliness, always an issue in Victorian culture, had by the 1880s become an obsession. Older elements of moral character continued to define the manly man, but a new emphasis on physical vitality began to assert itself as well. Concern about the over-soft socialization of the young promoted the popularity of college athletics. During the 1880s, waves of muscular Christianity began to wash over campuses. It was only a short step from manliness to militarism. A bland but significant example was Theodore Roosevelt became the poster boy for white-male renewal—especially among the Anglo-American elite, the effete “better sort” whom Roosevelt scorned for their decadent and effeminate ways. A nearsighted, asthmatic boy, he turned his own struggle to overcome weakness into a lesson for an entire “leadership class.” The struggle began early. When “Teedie” was twelve, a doctor told him that one must “make one’s body,” or one’s mind would languish. The boy vowed, “I’ll make my body.” He began to devote himself to exercise, inaugurating a regime of frenetic activity that he never abandoned. ”