Biography For Boys

Tony Hsieh’s first successful venture was in middle school, selling personalized buttons. At Harvard, he made a profit compiling and selling study guides. In 1998, Hsieh sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million. About a decade later, he sold online shoe empire Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion. The secret to his success? Making his employees happy. Drawing on interviews with a wide range of people whose lives Hsieh touched, Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans craft a rich portrait of a man who was plagued by the pressure to succeed but who never lost his generous spirit.

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.

Tani Adewumi didn’t know what Boko Haram was or why they had threatened his family. All he knew was that when his parents told him the family was going to America, Tani thought it was the start of a great adventure rather than an escape. In truth, his family’s journey to the United States was nothing short of miraculous - and the miracles were just beginning.

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.

There's a mark on every stage around the world that signifies the center of its depth and width, called "center center." James Whiteside has dreamed of standing on that very mark as a principal dancer with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre ever since he was a twelve-year-old blown away by watching the company's spring gala.

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering wildfires, war, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story about this deaf football team. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one.

The Boy They Tried to Hide is the startling true account of how truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.... Shane Dunphy was working as a resource teacher in a rural town when he was approached by the mother of one of his pupils, seeking help. She is worried for her troubled young son, who has been found leaving the house late at night to go deep into the woods near their home. He has spoken of meetings with a friend, Thomas, but no one else has seen him or knows who he is.

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.

Roald Dahl penned his first letter to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, when he was just nine years old. The origins of a brilliantly funny, subversive, creative mind were evident in boarding school, and as he entered adulthood, his penchant for storytelling emerged in his missives home from Africa, where he was stationed by Shell Oil, and then the desert camps of the Royal Air Force.

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.

On July 4th, 2013, Connor Sparrowhawk, also known as Laughing Boy or LB, was found dead in a specialist NHS unit. Connor, who had autism and epilepsy, had a seizure while in the bath, and no member of staff was on hand to stop him from drowning. An entirely preventable death. Sara Ryan presents a frank, sometimes funny and touching account of her son's early life and preventable death and the unfolding #JusticeforLB campaign.

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.

In 2006, after the end of her marriage to the first man she ever loved, Jessica Simpson wonders who she really is. Exploring what she truly wants in a relationship, Jessica begins dating again. This time her only vow is not to leap for the fairy tale. Don’t overthink. Just enjoy the moment. But when an A-list childhood crush invites her on a romantic getaway, it’s impossible for Jessica not to swoon.

Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys and the movie adaptation October Sky have become one of the most popular stories in the world. But what happened to Homer after he was a West Virginia rocket boy? In his latest memoir, Homer recounts how he fought through some of the worst battles in Vietnam, discovered sunken U-boats, befriended Tom Clancy, and more. Although told with humor and wit, Hickam does not shy away from the hardship endured and the mistakes he made during the tumultuous decades since his life in the town he made famous—Coalwood, West Virginia.

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.

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....

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.

Jamie Vardy, the free-scoring talisman behind Leicester City's Premier League champion title, has become a modern against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie thought his chances had gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels while working in a factory, his impressive performances and hard work saw him rise again.

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.

In this installment, boys travel to the ancient world, following such famous figures as Alexander the Great and Hannibal, learning about the military battles that changed history. Beginning in Ancient Greece, the battles storm across the known world and into the Middle Ages, ending with the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England.