This needed and varied volume demonstrates the diversity that falls under the topic of masculinities and health. The editors note that men’s health by many if not most measures lags womens’. Their goal is to interrogate ‘how the relationships between masculinities and men’s health are constructed, both explicitly and implicitly, in discourse’ (2). The view of health is expansive, including mental health. The data range from in-person ethnography to social media discourses.

There are fourteen chapters, the first an introduction and overview by the editors. They focus on the pressures that hegemonic masculinity (HM) places on men in all societal positions. The next four chapters all focus on men’s mental health. In chapter 2, Paul Baker & Luke Collins show how men’s talk about anxiety is reframed as bravery and thus aligns with HM. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of men’s suicide notes, a sobering view that shows how men reconcile suicide with HM. Chapter 4 focuses on the dual negative pressures felt by men with eating disorders with such disorders being indexed as feminine. Chapter 5 is a more uplifting topic, showing how so-called ‘men’s sheds’ provide spaces for connection among men, especially retired men who desire a replacement for the social interactions of the workplace.

Chapter 6 moves away from mental health and focuses on the representation of men by feminine-identified writers of infertility blogs, in which Kinloch shows that these writers argue for or expect HM roles for men. The ‘manosphere’ appears in the next two chapters, first in chapter 7 in which Scott Burnett focuses on how ‘manfluencers’ construct a particular ideologically driven vision of a healthy man. Then in chapter 8, Mark McGlashan shows how the inequalities of health outcomes by gender is used to perpetuate an anti-feminist ideology. In chapter 9, Kristine Køhler Mortensen & Tommaso M. Milani focus on a nationalist gendered ideology of men’s sexual behaviour, constructed in classes for migrants who are seen as needing to be educated in the appropriate Danish masculine sexuality. Chapter 10 documents through narratives the struggles of transgendered men to attain acceptance under HM. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 all focus on advertising of men’s health, including skin care, skin-whitening, and erectile dysfunction and hair loss. Together, they show how these discourses draw on men’s insecurities and desires around HM, and that these products are needed to ‘fix’ their broken masculinities. Finally, chapter 14 discusses how Ghanaian men struggle to allow anxieties about Covid-19 to be expressed because of the HM role to be strong and heroic in a crisis.

Overall, this volume presents a valuable resource for viewing the multiple ways that interaction and language, both in person and online, reflect, recreate, and perpetuate HM in different contexts, and includes an impressive global diversity. It will likely prove to be an important starting point for what one hopes will be further work in this area. The only negative is the prohibitive price of the volume such that only those privileged enough to have a university library will be able to access it.