Not everyone agrees that there is a crisis in boys’ education. Feminists, in particular, have suggested that this rhetoric reflects men’s fear that women are catching up after years of discrimination. In a blog post on USA Today’s Opinion page, Kim Gandy, president of the US National Organization for Women, argues the point, claiming that “part of the boy-crisis alarm is about competition…Too many men have a problem seeing women as equals, and would just as soon not have to compete.”


“We Want a Black Poem”
Austin Clarke
pp. 64-68

Both brothermalcolm.net and Columbia University’s The Malcolm X Project are fine web resources for information on Malcolm X. They include scholarly articles, audio files of oral histories and X’s speeches, access to FBI files, and detailed chronologies of his life.

In the two essays in The Fire Next Time (New York: Library of America, 1998), James Baldwin writes about X’s childhood in Harlem and discusses race in America.


“Schoolboy Chic”
Tim McKeough
pp. 71-73

Even a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy has to put on the ritz once in a while, and when he does, he needn’t find himself at a loss for advice on what to wear.

The pseudonym “Nicholas Antongiavanni” belongs to a former speechwriter for George W, Condi Rice, and Rudy Giuliani, who has just published a fashion guide for the ambitious man. In The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men’s Style (New York: Collins, 2006), the author proposes that men should be equipped with lessons from The Prince as well as the name of a good tailor as they haul themselves up in the world. The book includes requisite bitchy takedowns of male celeb fashion faux pas.