In Creating the College Man, Daniel A. Clark argues that middle-class mass magazines, which accommodated multilayered and sometimes contradictory ideals of masculine success, “spearheaded” changes in the cultural construction of college. Through his study of magazines during the period from 1890 to 1915 Clark shifts attention away from the 1920s, a decade of focus for historians of higher education, and instead considers “how the idea of going to college had become so intimately intertwined with corporate business success” and “male, middle-class identity” (184) in the decades before enrolments soared.

Clark's analysis is based on four well-known and widely read magazines: Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post (weeklies), which he read from cover to cover for the years from 1899 to 1915; and Munsey's and Cosmopolitan (monthlies), which he read from cover to cover for the years from 1893 to 1912. Reading the magazines in their entirety is a huge undertaking, which makes the clarity of Clark's argument all the more impressive. The book is structured in thematic chapters which, taken as a whole, illustrate the composite image of the college man who “could simultaneously be genteel yet tough and rowdy, cultured yet manly, polished yet professional” (187). Simplified to a broad overview, the chapters chart changing conceptions of manhood within and without the magazines' pages: the effects of corporate capitalism and the influx of immigrant workers which necessitated a reworking of the dominant self-made and self-cultured paradigm; the espousal of an ideal “manly” college curriculum which combined technical and business knowledge with liberal arts education; the strengthening of the civilized–primitive ideal of college manhood, with the sports field, fraternities, and hazing rituals valued for their reinforcement of masculine ruggedness within the parameters of the civilizing university; the fusion of college and business worlds through the figure of the college man; the increasing function of college as a “kind of cultural shorthand” (188), integrated into normative middle-class (not just masculine) ideals of success.

A real strength of Clark's book is his sensitive analysis of the various genres within the magazine – fiction, editorials, articles and advertising – making distinctions between, for instance, the treatment of football in editorials and in fiction. At times, however, Clark's argument would benefit from a wider view of the magazine medium and its publishing context in order to impart a more nuanced sense of the appropriateness of the medium to the message (over and above the high circulation figures, broad readerships, and commercial nature which Clark repeatedly, but generally, states as reasons for the centrality of magazines in his research). More probing discussions of the magazines' full range of content, their changing editorial policies during this period, or their relation to specialized business periodicals, for instance, would help contextualize his four primary sources and their dynamic cultural work in the same way that he contextualizes his discussions of manhood within gender studies and his discussions of college within the historiography of higher education.

Nonetheless, although such context would add to the book, its absence does not significantly detract from it. Indeed, Clark crafts a persuasive, enjoyable and richly illustrated narrative from a range of magazine material in Creating the College Man. In its interdisciplinary approach, the book will find a wide audience, particularly within masculinity and gender studies, American studies, the history of higher education and studies in middle-class popular magazines. Scholars in all fields will no doubt find Clark's opening questions, asking just how college education has come to dominate our conceptions of power and advancement, particularly pertinent at the present time.