Biography For Boys

Many nice young upper-middle class white boys have dreamed about being the ultimate bad-ass. Few have been forced to prove it. For straight-A student and suburban Jewish boy Joshua Elyashiv, the dream of being tough and invincible, like his heroes Jason Bourne and Bruce Lee to name just a few, was so overwhelming that he convinced his parents to put him through military school where he became a decorated martial arts pro.

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.

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.

A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.

It was the spring of 1987, and crack cocaine had turned whole swaths of Detroit into veritable combat zones. The city thought it had seen everything - until one evening that May, when the police arrested a 17-year-old kid named Rick Wershe. They called him White Boy Rick. In a city known for its fraught racial divide, Wershe had somehow joined the ranks of the drug kingpins on the predominantly Black East Side before he was old enough to shave.

From surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny pop of the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School class of 1959 - a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys - who came of age in Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed possible.

Sixteen-year-old Matthew McGough was a fairly typical teenager, obsessed with getting through high school, girls, and baseball, not necessarily in that order. His passion for the New York Yankees was absolute, complete with a poster of his hero, Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly, hanging on his bedroom wall. Despite having no connections whatsoever with the ballclub, Matt dreamed of sitting in the dugout with the fabled Bronx Bombers.

In Wendy and the Lost Boys best-selling author Julie Salamon explores the life of playwright Wendy Wasserstein's most expertly crafted character: herself. The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. But with her high- pitched giggle and unkempt curls, she projected an image of warmth and familiarity. Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein. Or thought they did.

Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.

Meet young José and his friend Trino as the war breaks out in their hometown of Sahuayo. Follow José through his own struggles as the violence escalates, up to his joining the Cristero army in 1927 to fight for freedom of religion. Captured by government forces, José refused to deny his faith in exchange for his freedom.

The Vulcan, the second of the three V bombers built to guard the UK during the Cold War, has become an aviation icon like the Spitfire, its delta shape instantly recognizable, as is the howling noise it makes when the engines are opened for takeoff. Vulcan Boys is the first Vulcan book recounted completely firsthand by the operators themselves.

In this inclusive history and guide to skin care and beauty, journalist and founder of Very Good Light David Yi teaches us that self-care, wellness, and feeling beautiful transcends time, boundaries, and binaries - and that pretty boys can change the world.

The Boys in the Light follows the parallel journeys of Company D and Eddie Willner, the author’s father, as they experience two sides of World War II. This is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the strength of the bonds forged during war; a must-listen for fans of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile.

Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered.

In a typical school year, every kid has one or two things go wrong. But for Jordan, there’s a lot going wrong all the time. By keeping his cool (some of the time), banging on the drums (a lot), and keeping his sense of humor (all the time), Jordan’s going to try to make it through the year...and grow up to write a book about it!

Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences...despite his best laid plans to be a good Muslim boy. By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran-Iraq war, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed 'temporary marriage' not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police....

Josiah was 19 with the world at his feet when things changed. Without warning, the new university student's mental health deteriorated to the point that he planned his own death. His mother, bestselling author Amanda Prowse, found herself grappling for ways to help him, with no clear sense of where that could be found. This is the book they wish had been there for them during those dark times.

On Valentine’s Day 1988, twenty-year-old Lynette White was brutally murdered in a dark corner of Cardiff’s world-famous, and infamous, Tiger Bay. Stigmatised by a bad reputation, the area was on the brink of major redevelopment which would change the historic community forever. South Wales Police launched its biggest murder hunt to date, and within weeks detectives released a photofit of a prime suspect seen outside the murder scene, his hands covered in blood. A white man. But as the months passed by and no arrest was made, the police came under inevitable pressure.

Denham (Denny) Fouts, the 20th century's most famous male prostitute, was a socialite and literary muse whose extraordinary life started off humbly in Jacksonville, Florida. But in short order he befriended (and bedded) the rich and celebrated and in the process conquered the world.

In 2005, when Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, asked why so few women, even today, achieve tenured positions in the hard sciences, Eileen Pollack set out to find the answer. A successful fiction writer, Pollack had grown up in the 1960s and '70s dreaming of a career as a theoretical astrophysicist. Denied the chance to take advanced courses in science and math, she nonetheless made her way to Yale.