Robert Bly writes that it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by popular culture are worn out, that a man can no longer depend on them.  Bly looks at the importance of the Wild Man (reminiscent of the Wild Woman in Women Who Run With the Wolves), who he compares to a Zen priest, a shaman or a woodman.

'This book needs to be read, I believe, not as a dry work of scholarship to be judged coolly by the mind, but as the work of a poet struggling to convey an emotional experience and lead us to what he has found within himself' Guardian

'Eclectic and unclassifiable. Iron John is a work whose mentors are the prophetic poets and crazies, William Blake and Walt Whitman' Sydney Morning Herald

'Important.timely.and powerful' New York Times