ABOUT THIS BOOK

When Cowboys Come Home: Veterans, Authenticity, and Manhood in Post–World War II America is a cultural and intellectual history of the 1950s that argues that World War II led to a breakdown of traditional markers of manhood and opened space for veterans to reimagine what masculinity could mean. One particularly important strand of thought, which influenced later anxieties over “other-direction” and “conformity,” argued that masculinity was not defined by traits like bravery, stoicism, and competitiveness but instead by authenticity, shared camaraderie, and emotional honesty. To elucidate this challenge to traditional “frontiersman” masculinity, Aaron George presents three intellectual biographies of important veterans who became writers after the war: James Jones, the writer of the monumentally important war novel From Here to Eternity; Stewart Stern, one of the most important screenwriters of the fifties and sixties, including for Rebel without a Cause; and Edward Field, a bohemian poet who used poetry to explore his love for other men. Through their lives, George shows how wartime disabused men of the notion that war was inherently a brave or heroic enterprise and how the alienation they felt upon their return led them to value the authentic connections they made with other men during the war.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

AARON GEORGE is an assistant professor of American history at Tarleton University in Stephenville, Texas.

REVIEWS

"Beautifully written and sensitively wrought, When Cowboys Come Home rejects the images of WWII veterans as pugilists or Organization Men. Through neglected figures, including James Jones and Edward Fields, Aaron George audaciously insists that vets took from their war experience a thirst for male bonding, camaraderie, and intense relationships."
— David Steigerwald, author of The Sixties and the End of Modern America

"A fascinating story of three writers—veterans of World War II in search of authenticity."
— James B. Gilbert, author of Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s

"By highlighting how World War II provided veterans with a set of experiences that undermined traditional notions of masculinity, George makes
an essential contribution to our understanding of postwar American society, twentieth-century white, gay, and Jewish manhood, and the role of wartime service in postwar rejections of domesticity and anxieties about masculinity."

— American History

TABLE OF CONTENTS