Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice

** Exclusive CBC Author Interview with Jim Geraghty ** 

The days of rugged individualism and virtuous manly men are gone. Pajama Boy? Say it ain’t so!

Whether you’re a young woman seeking out a boyfriend or husband or a contractor seeking out a prospective worker, good luck with convincing most Millennial men to abandon adolescence. This new age of man buns, metrosexuality and meekness in men portends bad news.

One can’t help but think, Where have all the real men disappeared to? Are they mythical creatures who are just figments of our imaginations?

Although most Millennial guys might appear to be a lost cause, a new book suggests they can be saved after all — and it couldn’t be more timely! In Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family and Other Manly Advice, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Cameron Edwards of NRANews offer some sound advice for young men who are dispirited by our culture or who are eager to repudiate their Peter Pan ways.

This book is chock-full of sage advice young guys can easily grasp and implement into their  lives. Using their experiences as husbands and fathers, Geraghty and Edwards advise their charges on how to take the initiative, or how to succeed in the domestic sphere.

Heavy Lifting encourages young men to become independent — to leave their parents’ basements, to put away the video games, to dress well, to find work, to be assertive, and to start families. Readers will appreciate the first-hand testimonies and hilarious anecdotes provided by the authors.

For example, in“Asking Her Out”, Geraghty writes an important piece about how young men should handle pursuing women, facing rejection, and preparing for “the right girl”. He counsels that “There’s a sting that comes with rejection. But it shouldn’t be crippling, and the fear of rejection shouldn’t cripple us either.”

In the chapter entitled “Settling Down,” Cam makes a great case for young men to discover the beauty of settling down, saying “Settling down with a wife and kids that you love isn’t settling for less. In fact, it could be more than you ever thought possible.”

An intersection of the Art of Manliness and The Good Men Project, Heavy Lifting does an adequate job of encouraging Millennials guys to aspire to be men. Geraghty and Edwards seek to improve their younger male counterparts, and their book certainly achieves this goal.

Heavy Lifting is a blueprint all Americans can use to cultivate the next generation of men. Read it — and encourage the young men in your life to read it as well.

Original CBC review by Gabriella Hoffman.

Tags: Heavy Lifting, Jim Geraghty