American Fatherhood: A History

This book’s prosaic title belies its excitingly unconventional concepts, methods, and insights. Its topic of fatherhood might seem ordinary enough, but its singular approach assuredly is not. Originally published in German, it was awarded the 2013 Organization of American Historians Willi Paul Adams Prize for the best book in U.S. history written in a language other than English. Martschukat’s creativity surely accounts for this book’s distinctive structure and remarkably clever conceptualization of American fatherhood. Claiming as its considerable territory the transitions and underappreciated varieties within fatherhood from the Revolution to the present, the book views its subject through twelve different lenses, each receiving its own chapter, in roughly chronological order. The first chapter is a collective portrait of fatherhood’s virtually inevitable reshaping in a country newly freed from ties to its imperial parent. Thenceforward, American Fatherhood truly comes into its own, through the remaining eleven chapters and their cleverly chosen...