The Compleat Gentleman - Hardcover

Neither prude, nor prig, nor fop, the gentleman is 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. Miner is too wise in the ways of young men to think they will respond to lectures or another guidebook on which fork to use. Instead he tells of an ideal and the men throughout history who have tried--always imperfectly--to live up to it. Three masculine archetypes emerge-the warrior, the lover, and the monk or scholar-and combine in the character of the compleat gentleman, who always practices his virtues with the discretion, decorum, and nonchalance that the Renaissance called sprezzatura, and we call cool.