Forget everything you know about what is cool. In Marlene Connor's provocative book, What Is Cool?, she examines an important phenomenon that is often overlooked or, worse, dismissed as rebelliousness. Cool has its roots in the Black community of America, and it plays an important role in shaping a definition of manhood for young Black boys, based on the significant obstacles the male child finds in his community.

These Blacks, from whom much of America takes its cues, perceive, acknowledge, define, and reflect cool in a way that society in general has yet to comprehend. Cool, at its most basic, is a way of living and of surviving in an inhospitable environment. Cool is a rational reaction to an irrational situation, a way of fitting in while standing out, of gaining respect while instilling fear.

Chronicling cool from its birth during slavery to its development during the jazz era, the civil rights and revolutionary movements, the influx into corporate America in the seventies, and today in the age of rap, Marlene Connor shows how cool has touched the lives of all Black Americans.

Cool is perhaps the most important force in the life of a Black man in America, and it is the most powerful yet intangible force in America. What Is Cool? attempts to reveal what cool really is - its essence and its origins - and explains why it is to be praised yet why it is insidious.

In a country where everyone is hip but few are truly cool, what does it actually mean to embody cool? What does it mean for men and women? The implacable cool is defined in all its nuances in What Is Cool? as it examines Black manhood while providing the flavor for understanding where we are in this society and how our children are affected and influenced by lifestyle.