‘Of Beards and Men’

Excerpt

Dewey would have been a sympathetic audience for “Of Beards and Men,” a finely detailed, borderline obsessive history by Christopher Oldstone-Moore, who spends more than 300 pages arguing that there’s very little on which facial hair might not come to bear, from politics to religion to revolution. (As for Lincoln, he won — and grew the beard.)

Oldstone-Moore, a lecturer in history at Wright State University (and, at least as recently as his faculty head shot, a beard-wearer), approaches facial hair as an index of the vertiginous roil of masculinity itself. “Whenever masculinity is redefined, facial hairstyles change to suit,” he writes. “The history of men is literally written on their faces.” In considering the subject, Oldstone-Moore is in good company. The Supreme Court, the Roman Catholic Church, Rousseau and Plutarch have all weighed in on the subject.

Read the review from the New York Times Sunday Book Review.