What defines a “real” man? A “good” man? A fully developed, “self-actualized” man, untroubled by fears of weakness, inadequacy, or old school stereotypes? With Father’s Day approaching, we decided to take a look at books old and new and Web sites on the subject of manhood. The introduction to therapist Thomas Hart’s 2004 book, What Does It Mean to Be a Man? ($12) begins, “The trouble begins when a little boy is told that boys don’t cry.” The table of contents promises a rich read, with chapters on “Mastering Anger and Violence,” “Putting Sex and Love Together” and “Being a Dad.” Sam Keen’s 1992 best-selling Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man ($11) is still an extremely high-ranking seller at Amazon. It offers a brief history of manhood and asks men to look at their unconscious bondage to certain ideas about “woman,” their dependence on work for self-worth, and their “warrior psyches” and it even promotes ecological awareness as an alternative to destructive, domineering tendencies. It wasn’t too long ago that much was made about the “crisis” for boys as they fell behind in school due to supposed neglect and denial of their gender-specific needs. From higher rates of attention deficit disorder to lower test scores than girls and greater abuse of alcohol and drugs, the crisis gave us the important work of therapist and educator Michael Gurian. His 1997 blockbuster, The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors, Educators Can Do to Shape Boys Into Exceptional Men, ($10.50) is the bible for how to understand and raise boys. Read Gurian’s Amazon blog to check out his philosophy. And check out Menstuff, an expansive Web site started by Gordon Clay as a not-for-profit educational clearinghouse/resource center for all things related to men’s issues.

As a mother who spent a total of 32 months of her life breastfeeding two children, I’m a huge advocate of all of the advantages of breast milk over formula (see “101 Reasons to Breastfeed Your Child”). Being a nursing mother comes with its share of logistical challenges: You need different bras, you have to learn how to treat thrush and you must cope with department-store employees who frown at you for nursing in the fitting rooms. (Really, would they prefer to have a woman bare her breast in the aisles between the racks of clothes?) I would have loved having resources like La Leche League International’s “Breastfeeding Answers” page, which addresses everything from allergies and colic to feeding frequency and how to nurse twins. BreastFeeding.com is a friendly, upbeat site with a community link, where you can visit online with other nursing mothers; live “Ask a Lactation Consultant” sessions; and the more gossipy “Breastfeeding Celebrities: Who Is, Who Isn’t?” Much drier, but with tons of accurate information, is the Center for Disease Control’s site on breastfeeding. The always-reliable Babycenter.com has breastfeeding videos, including the best nursing positions and problems and how to handle them. If you’re trying to keep track of how many times you’ve breastfed or when you last pumped, try BabbleSoft’s Baby Insights software, which is particularly useful when you have a newborn and need to be able to tell the pediatrician how often baby is nursing. Moms have better fashion options nowadays, too. Glamourmom sells clever nursing bra/tank tops – like the apple-green tank ($29; pictured) — that allow you to discreetly nurse your baby while still wearing something modern and cute. Expressiva Nursingwear carries stylish dresses designed for nursing, such as this pretty flower-print shrug dress ($59) with two hidden nursing openings. This Moroccan-style top is made from rayon and spandex, for a soft and stretchy feel ($37). Then there’s the amusing “I make milk, what’s your superpower?” long-sleeved T-shirt ($36).

If you’re like me, before you buy a magazine, you first flip through the pages. You couldn’t do that –– virtually ––online until last week, when Barnes & Noble began selling digital downloadable magazine subscriptions with its “See Inside” feature, which enables customers to experience interactive previews of the magazine’s content. I clicked through the May 2008 issue of ELLE, and it was almost like standing in line at the grocery counter flipping through a magazine: I could hardly find the articles for all the ads. “See Inside” allows access only to the first pages of the magazine –– not so good for “back-flippers,” those who flip through magazines from back to front. The good news is you can move your magazine habit to your laptop. Digital downloads are convenient, and the price is all right. Save beaucoup on Saveur, $20 for a one-year subscription, dwell for $20, Reader’s Digest for $10, and Woman’s Day, $10. Who says last month’s magazine is trash? Reading the last six months of a beloved publication can be a wonderful pastime, as anyone who has spent some time in their doctor’s waiting room or at the beauty shop can attest. One of the coolest features of this new B&N service is you can download individual back issues. Missed last December’s Cosmopolitan, which had this juicy perennial on its cover: “Guys Spill: White Lies they Tell Women All the Time”? Or perhaps you’d like to read about 45 things to do before you die, no doubt balanced by Jack Nicholson’s rules for living in the January 2008 issue of Men’s Journal ($5).

Do a Google search for “plastic shoes” and the first site to come up is Crocs (pictured). Originally intended as a slip-resistant boating and outdoor shoe when introduced in 2002, the bulbous, brightly colored sandals quickly became wildly popular with kids and adults around the world, much to the chagrin of the style-conscious. (See I Hate Crocs, a site devoted to destroying the omnipresent footwear. There’s even a store where haters can purchase anti-Croc T-shirts and pins.) Those who swear by their Crocs love Croslite, the foam resin from which they are made, which forms itself to the foot and causes them to be extremely comfortable and durable, not to mention relatively inexpensive when compared with Birkenstocks, another popular, much maligned “ugly” shoe. To view the wide array of shoe styles now available from Crocs, including heels, check out the company’s footwear section. But wait. These are plastic. Plastic is bad for the planet, right? It sits in landfills and ends up in the stomachs of wildlife. Aren’t we all trying to be more ecologically aware? That’s where SolesUnited comes in. Launched by Crocs, Inc., in January, the footwear donation program aims to get folks to recycle their old Crocs, which will be made into new “quality footwear for people in need worldwide.” Crocs has already donated more than one million pairs of shoes through SolesUnited, with celebs such as Madonna and Wyclef Jean lending their support to the program. Meanwhile, Brazilian-made Melissa Shoes, also plastic, are the product of a socially responsible company that employs sustainable practices and pays its employees above-average wages and benefits. Check out the Desire & Triton Red Hot Heels ($58) and other styles at Kaight. All shoes are made from Melflex, a recyclable, extremely flexible PVC. The company also recycles 99.9 percent of the factory’s water and waste and even recycles overstocked styles into next season’s collection.

According to researchers, most of us buy items from only a small number of categories online (books or watches, say) and have been pretty settled in those habits for years. A new move by Zappos may change that. Zappos, after all, is the company whose too-good-to-be-true policies convinced many netizens to shop online for one of the toughest things out there: shoes. By offering free shipping, free shipping on returns, and a 365-day window in which those returns could be made, they took the fear out of experimenting. Now, the company is doing the same thing for a wider array of consumer goods, like sunglasses, handbags, and perhaps most significantly, electronics. Many of us, after all, do our gizmo research online but most of our buying at physical stores; since electronics break so easily and can be plagued by glitches, you can waste a ton of money paying to ship the bulky items cross-country for repair. While Zappos’ freshly revised policies make it clear that you can’t “try on” a new digital camera the way you can a pair of leopard pumps and decide you don’t like it (”Any electronic product that has been opened and/or used cannot be returned unless the unit was received defective,” it states), they still appear to be smoothing out some wrinkles in the transaction. Company CEO Tony Hsieh told us he’s taking it slowly. “We are just getting into electronics in a small way,” he says. Visitors will note an unusual approach to inventory: the MP3-player category contains no iPods or Zunes, just 21 varieties of those sunglass-MP3 combo thingies, for example, and they don’t have any DVD players. “Right now,” Hsieh says, “we are experimenting in a small way in different categories. Over time, we’ll see which categories our customers are most excited about and expand from there.”

We recently took a look at folks with possibly unhealthy (certainly unusual) attachments to their chosen brands of pocket notebooks. But after you’ve settled on the perfect pad, what do you use to jot down all those impromptu thoughts? Enter the pocket-sized pen, which can be surprisingly hard to find, at least in a version that writes with a pleasing flow. It’s pretty extreme, for example, to pay $32 for what looks like a toilet-roll holder, even if it does claim to write at any angle and on wet paper — and don’t get me started on this pendulum-shaped thingie that costs around $300. Getting closer to a human price range is the $15 Inka Travel Pen, which is designed to fit on a key chain, but there’s a bit of screwing and unscrewing involved if you want to transform it from mini- to full-sized mode. Less work is required with the cutely designed FoldzFlat, which does just what its name suggests and seems intended mostly as a promotional item (you print your business name and phone number on it and give ‘em away); it’s also available in a sturdier metal-and-leather version, but neither is exactly what you’d call a tactile pleasure to use. By far the best option I’ve tried, both in terms of usability and of reasonable price, is the Zebra F-301 Compact (pictured). Its design allows the finger-sized tube to expand to the length of a normal pen without undue hassle; its fine-point tip writes smoothly; it has a hole for easy keychain or lanyard attachment; and — hello, eco-conscious note takers — it even takes ink refills. The only downside is that they’re hard to find in stores; online, though, you can find them for under $2 each.