What does it mean to be a man in our time?

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Neither prude nor prig nor fop, the gentleman is the true knight and the true lover, a classic combination of strength and selflessness, contemplation, correct action, and, yes... cool.

He is the aristocrat not of wealth or birth, but of virtue.

Other men, as well as women, instinctively admire him. But they may not realize why they are drawn to him, for he never calls attention to his own virtues or strength.

He will take a stand to defend the true and the good and the beautiful. But he knows that taking a stand is very different from making a show. Making a show is not cool.

Miner is too wise in the ways of young men to think they will respond to a lecture — or another guidebook on which fork to use or how to keep your bowtie from spinning. (Of course, the gentleman's bowtie does not spin — cool presumes competent!)

Instead he tells us a story, a story of an ideal and the men throughout history who have tried — always imperfectly — to live up to it.

Miner traces the concept of manliness from the jousting fields of the twelfth century to the decks of Titanic. The three masculine archetypes that emerge — the warrior, the lover, and the monk or scholar — combine in the character of the "compleat gentleman": the warrior for truth and beauty; the lover whose passion exemplifies his respect for women; the man of disciplined mind who knows he must be able to discern truth if he is to defend it.

And finally he shows us that the true gentleman always practices these virtues with the discretion, decorum, and nonchalance that the Renaissance called sprezzatura, and we call cool.