Throughout the memoir, Galloway re-evaluates traditional masculine virtues, arguing that kindness and the willingness to ask for help are undervalued strengths. Analyze how he uses his own academic and professional failures to deconstruct the traditional ideals of masculinity and advance his argument for a more viable definition of manhood.

The text frequently contrasts Galloway’s own trajectory with those of less privileged peers, including his gay roommate Pat and his Black classmate Drew Sheldon. Analyze how these juxtapositions complicate the book’s primary diagnosis of a crisis facing men. To what extent does the narrative successfully integrate an understanding of race, class, and sexual orientation into its arguments?

Drawing on concepts like the “Addiction Economy” and “Deaths of Despair,” how does Galloway’s reframing of the male crisis as a public health issue shift proposed solutions from individual morality to systemic interventions? What interventions does Galloway propose, and how do they intersect between the individual and the institutional?

Galloway’s use of an economic and business lexicon to describe emotional and relational concepts, such as fatherhood as a “negative game” and social duty as “surplus value,” is a defining feature of his style. Examine how this rhetorical choice serves his persuasive goals and shapes his particular definition of a functional, modern masculinity.

Notes on Being A Man is framed as advice from a father, culminating in a direct letter to his sons. How does this paternal, epistolary voice shape the book’s tone, authority, and intended audience, and how does this framework both strengthen and potentially limit the scope of its arguments?

Trace the function of relational “guardrails” throughout Galloway’s life, from his mother and devout friend Brett to his UCLA fraternity and first wife. How does the memoir argue that the contemporary erosion of these social and institutional structures affects men of all ages?

What is gained and lost in Galloway’s translation of data-driven social science from scholars like Richard V. Reeves and Jonathan Haidt into a personal, accessible memoir? Are his anecdotes effective at communicating these points? Why or why not?

How does Galloway’s evolving relationship with his absent and parsimonious father serve as a narrative spine for the book? Compare two examples from Galloway’s childhood to show both the positive and negative influences his father had on him.