This absorbing book illuminates how elite masculinity is actively produced and preserved through institutionalized experiences in private all-male preparatory schools and afterwards. The rich words of the young men interviewed in depth during and after their time at such schools are fascinating and enlightening, as is the author’s insightful analysis.

Caroline Hodges Persell, New York University

I’ll point to Privileged Brotherhoods as an exemplar of collaborative field research for a long time. Howard’s student collaborators — college students and prep school grads with intimate knowledge of the youthful world of elite education — offer incomparable insight into how certain forms of masculinity evolve yet endure despite massive societal change. This is elegantly crafted and timely sociology.

Mitchell L. Stevens, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Privileged Brotherhoods reveals how elite all-boys schools produce elite masculinity. Documenting the practices and interactions characteristic of these schools — from locker room talk to fight club — Howard shows how gender, race, and class privilege intersect to produce entitlement and lifelong class and gender loyalties.

Elizabeth Armstrong, University of Michigan
Privileged Brotherhoods offers an unprecedented look inside the hidden world of elite all-boys schools in the United States. These institutions have long shaped the nation’s most powerful men but have largely escaped critical scrutiny.
Drawing on extensive and immersive fieldwork, Adam Howard reveals how these schools function as incubators of elite masculinity, instilling in their students a sense of entitlement, competitive drive, and loyalty to powerful male networks. At the heart of this process are “brotherhoods”: informal institutions molding boys into men prepared to defend privilege and resist challenges to traditional power structures. Through compelling analysis and vivid storytelling, Howard traces how the relations and practices of elite masculinity cultivated in these settings extend their influence into political, economic, and cultural life well beyond the school gates.