J.D. Vance was an anonymous venture capitalist not long out of law school when he published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016. Within months, Vance had become a household name — smash best-seller, vocal Trump critic and legacy media’s favorite interpreter of Rust Belt America’s particular flavor of working-class white male despair. Fair to say that without his first book, Vance wouldn’t have managed the breakneck rise that, ironically, has landed him at the right hand of a man he once privately compared to Adolf Hitler.

I mention all this because Vice President Vance just announced plans to publish another book in June, 10 years to the month after the release of his first. Titled Communion, the new one is billed as a memoir of his conversion to Catholicism. Never mind that the book, like its predecessor, already seems to take some liberties with its material — the Catholic memoir’s cover appears to feature a Methodist church — the forthcoming sequel also sends clear signals that Vance has his political sights set higher than his current turn at No. 2.

Personally, though I’m less interested in its role as a campaign document (are we shocked he’s got heart-eyes for 2028?) than as a potential artifact of the cultural conversation right now about masculinity in the U.S. Vance frequently comments on the condition of young men, writ large, and has closely aligned himself with leading figures of the burgeoning “manosphere” online. Will he find in his personal conversion some essential clues about the popular image of modern masculinity — rampant as it is with loneliness, resentment and whatever “looksmaxxing” is — as his previous memoir tried with white Appalachia?

In fairness, maybe I’m just fitting a square peg in a round hole. Maybe the subject is top of mind not because of this announcement, but because of a book I already have cracked open: Jordan Ritter Conn’s American Men, due out later this month. It’s an intimate piece of journalism that focuses on just four men, whose personal stories traverse flashpoints often linked with masculinity – violent urges, sexual insecurities, flawed father figures, et al.

Now, it’s not perfect: The one Black man included is poor and transgender, which is hardly representative of the heterogeneity and lived experiences of Black men in this country – and invites some legitimate concerns about the book reinforcing stereotypes. Still, it’s refreshing to encounter a contribution to the conversation that disclaims the all-too-common idea that “one weird trick” or a podcaster-hawked supplement – or, as Vance recently suggested, cracking jokes and drinking beers – will fix this masculine identity crisis. Instead, the men here open themselves to probing, occasionally painful introspection — the kind of practice that may go a lot further toward actually solving, or at least diagnosing, the issues at stake than another soundbite or campaign slogan.

With that in mind, I’ll conclude my own meandering harangue at last. OK, your turn: What have you been reading that has helped you think about the conversation about masculinity in America? Please pass along your own comments, questions and scathingly personal criticisms at bookoftheday@npr.org.