Biography For Boys

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the US Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and to cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve....

Cristiano Ronaldo overcame poverty and childhood illness to become one of the best football players ever. Escaping the hot streets of Madeira, Ronaldo first proved himself as a wonder-kid at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, before becoming a legend for Real Madrid and Portugal. This is the story of how the gifted boy became a man, a team player and a legend.

In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.

The life and death of the legendary lead singer of INXS, as remembered by his sister Tina. He died at only 37, but his fans are legion. INXS singer/songwriter Michael Hutchence was the celebrated front man of a band that was the biggest in the world. Michael's big sister, Tina, adored him from the start. From a 12-year-old holding him in her arms as a newborn, to being his teenage nanny, Tina remained Michael's trusted confidante until his sudden death.

Once upon a time, they taught us to believe. They were the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, a blue-collar bunch led by an unconventional coach, and they engineered perhaps the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. Their "Miracle on Ice" has become a national fairy tale, but the real Cinderella story is even more remarkable. It is a legacy of hope, hard work, and homegrown triumph. It is a chronicle of everyday heroes who just wanted to play hockey happily ever after.

FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED. In this new audiobook, radio broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of The Beastie Boys. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

It's Belfast, 1975. The city lies under the dark cloud of the Troubles, and hatred fills the air like smoke. But Tony Macaulay has just turned 12 and he's got a new job. He's going to be a paperboy. And come rain or shine - or bombs and mortar - he will deliver. Paperboy lives in Upper Shankill, Belfast, in the heart of the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans. Bombings are on the evening news, rubble lies where buildings once stood, and rumours spread like wildfire about the IRA and the UDA.

On April 6, 1965, Georges Lemay was relaxing on his yacht in a south Florida marina following one of the largest and most daring bank heists in Canadian history. For four years, the roguishly handsome criminal mastermind hid in plain sight, eluding capture and the combined efforts of the FBI, Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His future appeared secure. What Lemay didn't know was that less than two hundred miles away at Cape Canaveral, a brilliant engineer named Harold Rosen was about to usher in the age of global live television.

In 2018, the Dallas Mavericks landed the most hyped European teen prospect in basketball history—Luka Doncic, who has proven to be a generational NBA talent with a flair for sensational playmaking. But that’s only half the story. With The Wonder Boy, MacMahon takes us beyond the highlights to the madness that ensues as the Mavericks try to avoid blowing their golden opportunity.

The Newbery Honor-winning author of Hatchet and Dogsong shares surprising true stories about his relationship with animals, highlighting their compassion, intellect, intuition, and sense of adventure. Gary Paulsen is an adventurer who competed in two Iditarods, survived the Minnesota wilderness, and climbed the Bighorns. None of this would have been possible without his truest companions: his animals.

Mark Noble joined the West Ham Youth Academy in 2000 and immediately made an impression. Tenacious, aggressive, brave and full of character, he was the perfect embodiment of West Ham’s values and was seen as having a bright future in the Hammers first team. But nobody could have dreamt of Mark’s career at the club: the most appearances in the Premier League for West Ham United and, by the time of his retirement in 2022, the longest-serving one-club player in Europe – his achievements cemented him as one of the club’s modern legends and earned him the nickname ‘Mr West Ham’.

Britain's most popular cook describes his personal culinary odyssey, from dangerous encounters with his mother's weevil-seasoned cakes to being harangued by readers who think he deliberately styles Yorkshire puddings to look like a woman's private parts.

By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. The son of a wealthy hedge fund manager and a financier, he grew up surrounded by a loving family and all the luxury an Upper East Side childhood could provide: education at the elite Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, summers in a sprawling seaside mansion in the Hamptons. He was strikingly handsome, moving with ease through glittering social circles and following in his father's footsteps to Princeton. But Tommy always felt different, and the cracks in his façade began to show.

Helene Munson resurrects her father’s WWII journals and embarks on a meticulous investigation, exposing how the Nazis trained 300,000 impressionable children as soldiers. In 1937, Munson’s father, Hans, was enrolled in an elite German school whose students were destined to take leadership roles in the Reich. At fifteen, he was drafted—along with the rest of the Hitler Youth—and assigned to an SS unit. A personal lens into a nation’s shameful past, Hitler’s Boy Soldiers documents the history of the largest army of child soldiers in recent memory.

The follow-up to Ben Brooks' New York Times best-selling Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, this book offers more extraordinary true stories of amazing people who broke the mold and changed the world for the better. The resulting message? Be yourself, and your dreams might come true.

Eddie Haskell was the bad kid who never went away. When child actor Ken Osmond stepped onto the set of Leave It to Beaver in 1957, he not only entered our living rooms, he homesteaded a permanent place in the American pop culture. Now it’s time to meet Ken Osmond, the man behind America’s preeminent bad boy. A devoted husband, father and patriot, he’s a man who’s been forever shadowed by Eddie Haskell, but whose own life was even more amazing than the character he portrayed.

Raw, gritty, compassionate, surprising and darkly funny - Australian legend Jimmy Barnes' unforgettable childhood memoir. A household name, an Australian rock icon, the elder statesman of OzPubRock - there isn't an accolade or cliché that doesn't apply to Jimmy Barnes. But long before Cold Chisel and Barnesy, long before the tall tales of success and excess, there was the true story of James Dixon Swan - a working class boy whose family made the journey from Scotland to Australia in search of a better life.

When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.

Wildlife expert and YouTube phenomenon, Coyote Peterson, is back with the sequel to the best-selling Brave Adventures: Wild Animals in a Wild World. Once again, Coyote and his crew voyage to new environments and encounter an even more eclectic ensemble of the planets' animals. From a slimy octopus to elusive tree climbing lizards to nomadic wolverines - this book promises to be another fast-paced, wild experience.

In Catch a Wave, Peter Ames Carlin pulls back the curtain on Brian Wilson, one of popular music's most revered luminaries, as well as its biggest mystery. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before heard studio recordings, Carlin follows the Beach Boys from their earliest days through Brian's deepening emotional problems to his triumphant re-emergence with the release of Smile, the legendarily unreleased album he had originally shelved.