On the larger historical picture, it is good; when alighting on the otherwise obscure moments of the bearded record, it is better, or at least more pleasurable to the lay reader...[Oldstone-Moore] falters a bit by giving short shrift to the present day, when a beard is a byword for hipness and the shifting politics of gender expression have made facial hair a loaded signifier. (The import of beards to the transgender community, both cultivation and depilation, would make an interesting book on its own.) But his long view on our unshaven history is likely to stand unchallenged for some time.
Mr. Oldstone-Moore gives several indications that he aced Academic Jargon 101—'the language of facial hair is built on the contrast of shaved and unshaved'—but he also presents a pleasant survey of beard knowledge with a wry sense of humor, starting with a trip back to the dawn of humanity, when beards evolved 'because our prehistoric female ancestors liked them.'
[Oldstone-Moore] writes well, and his erudition is impressive, enabling readers to learn all kinds of interesting things from this zigzag chronicle, which is basically a history of Western civilization as written on the faces of its leading men...But the author’s obsessive exegesis leads him out onto some fragile limbs.
In some ways, his book is as much about the absence of facial hair as its presence. The act of shaving has been consistently associated 'with some kind of transcendence of the body,' he writes. Still, there’s no getting around it: In this latest addition to the field of gender theory, the body will not be denied.
It's a deep dive and the early chapters might be a bit of a scholarly slog, even for an ardent pogonophile. But, much like growing a beard itself, the investment of time and patience (not to mention the occasional recombing) can be appreciated in hindsight...Of Beards and Men may not completely crack the code on facial hair, but once you've read it, it's unlikely you'll take any beard – or mustache – at face value again.
[P]resumably what we can expect paragraph by paragraph is fun trivia about beards, and what we can expect chapter by chapter is the sort of substantive insight into 'ideas of manhood' that only beards can provide. A book such as this needs to deliver on both levels. I’m not quite sure it delivers on either.
