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Willa Hammitt Brown

Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack is one of those rare gifts: A book I never knew I needed, but is now indispensable. Willa Hammitt Brown's work here is transcendent, a narrative and analysis that both illuminates the past while explaining our present world. It is sharp, ceaselessly fascinating, and leaves the reader transformed in how they see the past, the world, and themselves.

—Jared Yates Sexton, author of American Rule and The Man They Wanted Me to Be 

Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack

University of Minnesota Press

OUT NOW


Filled with first person narratives and legends, this beautifully-written book breaks new paths in labor, gender, and environmental history, and the history of capitalism.

—Scott Reynolds Nelson, author of Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend


In this nuanced and insightful work, Brown deftly weaves together cultural history and memory studies to give an intimate and revealing portrait of the Northwoods lumberjack, an American icon shrouded in layers of folklore. 

—Eric Rutkow, author of American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation


At last we have a book that pulls the lumberjack from the mists of memory, and vividly paints him in his true, wild, filthy glory.

—Mark Cecil, author of Bunyan and Henry and host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast

[Gentlemen of the Woods] demonstrates clear understanding of how nostalgia erases truth and creates palatable visions of the past … Willa Hammitt Brown, and her important book, demonstrate why we must demand universities require the study of history.

-Eric Loomis in The Nation

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Willa Hammitt Brown is a historian, speaker, and writer who has appeared on NPR, the CBC, and ABC, has written for The Atlantic, Environmental History, and Western History Quarterly, and is the author of Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood Myth and the American Lumberjack (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). She holds a PhD from the University of Virginia and a BA from Oxford University and has taught history, gender studies, and writing at the University of Virginia, onboard Semester at Sea, and at Harvard University. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, son, and their excellent dog.

 
 

SELECT MEDIA Appearances & Talks

“Author Chops Down Popular Myths” - Wisconsin Public Radio

“From Skid Row to folklore: Remaking the Lumberjack” - MPR News, MPR

“Author writes about the myth of the lumberjack” - Minnesota Live! - ABC5 Twin Cities

“North Star Voices: Gentlemen of the Woods” - Minnesota Historical Society, December 2025

“The Larry Meiller Show” - Wisconsin Public Radio, March 2025

“All Day Live” - FOX9 Twin Cities

“What We’re Reading” - KAXE Duluth, March 2025

“Second Nature: memory, myths, and the legacy of lumberjacks in the Northwoods” - Deer Lake Association, June 2024

“The True and Genuine Story of Paul Bunyan: Commercializing the Lumberjack Image, 1900-1920,” American Historical Association conference, January 2020.

“The Seasonal Round: the Anishinaabe and Itinerant Labor in the Northwoods,” Western History Association, Las Vegas, NV, October 2019.

"Dishonor Code" - HearSay from the Headlines, WHRV, November 25, 2014.

"Why Lumbersexuals are Coming Out of the Woodwork," Q, CBC, December 12, 2014

“…beautiful, hilarious, and engaging in that way where you’re suddenly 2000 words deep in esoteric history and slightly bewildered but thrilled to be there.” - Anne Helen Peterson

To contact Willa for a speaking engagement, podcast appearance, interview, classroom visit, article pitch, or just to chat please email:

willa.hammitt.brown@gmail.com