What makes a man in 2016 – and what makes a man question his own masculinity. Mr Tim Samuels, author of Who Stole My Spear?, provides some answers, plus solutions for the hunter-gatherer in the modern home, workplace and office space.

Looking at various cultural goings on in the past few weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re celebrating some sort of unofficial questioning-your-own-masculinity month. Yes, everyone’s having a go, it’s really quite cheery.

Last week, fine artist Mr Grayson Perry launched new TV series All Man, in which he travels across the UK to discover the real personalities behind various macho stereotypes, from cage fighters to gang members, to find out whether they hold up to close scrutiny. Over at Vice, they’ve just premiered a video about “The New Wave of American Masculinity” visiting people, from competitive eaters to dubious academics, who are trying to reclaim their manhood in various bizarre ways. Meanwhile The New York Times is asking whether manly book clubs can help prop up our (apparently) beleaguered male egos, and Mr Giles Coren is going through some deep (and not entirely pleasant) soul-searching for Esquire, in a column about how he gave up pleasuring himself.

In a turn up for the books, things seem to be happening off the internet, too. In London, the streets continue to be splashed with #Mandictionary billboard ads from male mental health charity Calm, a reminder of the fact that suicide is still the most common cause of death for men under 50 in the UK. The same people are mounting a “Save The Male” concert in Oxfordshire on Saturday. It seems like there are some things, as men, we need to talk about.

Against this backdrop comes the timely release of Who Stole My Spear?, a new book from journalist and documentary filmmaker Mr Tim Samuels. In the book, which covers everything from romance in the Tinder age to dealing with anxiety and depression (sounds heavy, is actually kind of funny), Mr Samuels seeks to investigate the current state of masculinity, outline some of the challenges it faces, and even offer up some helpful pointers of how we might fix it.

Key to all of this is the idea that masculinity, when repressed, eventually erupts in the kind of angry, aggressive and generally unpleasant behaviour we associate with things like Isis, or violent crime, or extremist politics. If this is true, says Mr Samuels, we should nurture masculinity, not be ashamed of it.

If it this sounds like an ambitious project, it is – and Mr Samuels didn’t take it lightly. “I sat down, got a stack of history and science books and reverted to university mode,” he says. “I did some proper economics-style research.”

This methodology turned up some surprising trivia. For example, the fact that corn flakes were originally invented by Mr John Harvey Kellogg as an anti-masturbation remedy. Or the story of how Victorian men had their own form of the meltdown, “brain sprain”, which was, at the time, attributed to the alienating and emasculating process of industrialisation.

Of course, the latter historical nugget is particularly relevant to now, when, says Mr Samuels, we are facing another kind of industrialisation in the form of digital culture, the automisation automation of jobs, and a widening division between the haves and the have-nots – all of which, in his opinion, work to undermine the fundaments of the male psyche. “So much of our work life is now out of kilter with what’s good for us as men. I think that’s a big source of the crisis. Far more than gender relations. If we are wired to be hunter-gatherers still, our basic role is to hunt, gather and provide shelter. If you live in London, that last task alone is a nightmare. Or having a stable job.”

What’s the solution, then? Without completely spoiling the book, let it suffice to say that Mr Samuels has made a rather noble attempt, within its pages, to advocate a few ways in which you can keep certain aspects of your masculinity well-oiled enough to make you feel a little bit better about everything. Suggestions range from developing a more casual vocabulary for feelings you might be having (a “mental cold” is shorthand for feeling a bit down in the dumps, while “mental flu” is when things have really taken a turn for the worse), to a series of “weekly spears”, such as learning a skill, or engaging with nature.

Of course, there are no easy fix-alls, but it certainly seems like a start, for a topic that we rarely get to talking about in our day-to-day lives. “I think it’s very easy to criticise and critique,” says Mr Samuels. “It’s much harder to come up with solutions. I think masculinity has always been linked to being productive, being part of something, and getting meaning through that longing and that doing. In a world where it’s much harder to belong and harder to be productive, it’s about keeping those impulses sweet.”

Who Stole My Spear?_ (Penguin) by Mr Tim Samuels is out now_