Biography For Boys

No parent is ever ready for a terminal diagnosis of their child. No mother should see the day where turning off your son's ventilator is the only option to end his pain. And, no grandfather should see the day when your grandchild is scheduled to die in his mother's arms. But, on September 10, 2005, this was the harsh reality facing our family, and this was the day we’d never forget. I am no pastor nor a preacher. I am no miracle worker nor a missionary.

From the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles comes an exploration of a promising theory that when put to practice wreaked havoc on the world. An expert on communism, Richard Pipes follows the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the Cold War, and finally, to its deterioration and collapse.

Who won the first Daytona 500? Fans still debate whether it was midwestern champion Johnny Beauchamp, declared the victor at the finish line, or longtime NASCAR driver Lee Petty, declared the official winner a few days after the race. Author John Havick interviewed scores of people, analyzed film of the race, and pored over newspaper accounts of the event. He uses this information and his deep knowledge of the sport as it worked then to determine what probably happened. But he also tells a much bigger story.

In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival freak Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles' death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book.

The true story of Deng Adut - Sudanese child soldier, refugee, man of hope. Movingly narrated by Blessing Mokgohloa. Deng Adut's family were farmers in South Sudan when a brutal civil war altered his life forever. At six years old, his mother was told she had to give him up to fight. At the age most Australian children are starting school, Deng was conscripted into the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

In 1996, an unprecedented decade-long courtroom battle was waged in Florida to help bring justice and hope to the family of a young boy born with no eyes after his mother was doused outside of a local u-pick farm by a chemical fungicide believed to have caused his birth defect and the birth defects of many other children. It was a battle that nearly everyone but attorney Jim Ferraro deemed unwinnable. After all, it involved one of the world's most powerful industrial giants.

In Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom, Christopher S. Wren overturns the myth of Ethan Allen as a legendary hero of the American Revolution and a patriotic son of Vermont and offers a different portrait of Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. Based on original archival research, this is a groundbreaking account of an important and little-known front of the Revolutionary War, of George Washington (and his good sense), and of a major American myth.

Cretin High School, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a Catholic, all-male, military academy that brought unique twists to the already difficult high school experience. Cretin Boys, as they were called, were subject to the oppression of both church and state as they navigated the diverse teaching styles of Christian Brothers, military instructors, and lay teachers. Cretin Boy looks at those menial first jobs, takes you dancing with a girl at that first high school formal, and peels down the street in a Corvette-on-loan with a teen at the wheel.

The year is 1957. Four-year-old Paul Ecke sits timidly at a foreign kitchen table, eating the first inferior meal of many in a foster home. Longing for his beloved mother, he sees her only on short weekend visits that grow more infrequent over time, as she tries unsuccessfully to hide a nervous breakdown along with yet another growing pregnancy. Despite - or perhaps because of - the emotional angst, complicated sexual identity issues, and deep loss he experiences, Paul cultivates a profound gift of creative genius.

On 2 November 1996, 16-year-old Damien Nettles went out for the evening in his home town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight. CCTV recorded him in a chip shop at 23:40 and on the High Street just after midnight. He has never been seen since. His mother, Valerie, has spent over two decades desperately trying to find out what happened to her son. Arrests have been made, and suspects released without charge. Despite years of research by journalists and a private investigator, Damien's vanishing remains a mystery.

Resisting the deadening silence of his family home in the elegant yet stiflingly safe neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nine-year-old Roger imagines himself a private eye in pursuit of criminals. With the dreamlike mystery of the city before him, he sets off alone, out into the streets of Manhattan, thrilling to a life of unsolved cases. Six decades later, Rosenblatt finds himself again patrolling the territory of his youth: The writing class he teaches has just wrapped up, releasing him into the winter night and the very neighborhood in which he grew up.

As the car approached the long, steep driveway, I was suddenly overcome by panic. I had never had much of a normal family life before. But now as the new foster home approached larger than life through the windshield, I realized for the first time that I was an orphan. Maybe not in the traditional sense of the word, but being given up by my father to live with some family was all I needed to be convinced that I was not wanted.

In this vivacious memoir, Thomas Keneally conjures up his youthful self - a red-haired teenager who idolised Gerald Manley Hopkins, had visions of being a sporting hero and dreamed of winning the heart of the alluring Bernadette Curran. The one role he did not see himself playing was priest, despite the encouragement of the Brothers at his Catholic school - until Bernadette announced her intention of becoming a nun. Drawing an affectionate portrait of the people who inspired and influenced him, Keneally beautifully captures the agonies and the ecstacies of adolescence.

In this now-classic Holocaust memoir, Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer recounts his survival of the Nazi camps. Clinging fiercely to his faith in God, the 19-year-old Unsdorfer faced the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald with courage and moral defiance, a testament to the abiding strength of the Jewish spirit.

Boys’ Secrets and Men’s Loves is the memoir of a law professor who has written over 20 books on the basic rights of American constitutionalism. He has been a prominent advocate of gay rights and feminism, which joins men and women in resistance.

Karl Taro Greenfeld knew from an early age that his little brother, Noah, was not like other children. He was unable to communicate verbally or tie his shoes, and despite his angelic demeanor was prone to violent outbursts. No doctor, social worker, or specialist could pinpoint what was wrong with Noah beyond a general diagnosis: autism. The boys' parents dedicated their lives to caring for their younger son? A challenging, often painful experience that their father detailed in a bestselling trilogy of books.

Graham Hale Gardner died before turning 23 and never learned to walk or speak due to severe cerebral palsy complicated by epilepsy. Yet he left a legacy of love and compassion that deeply moved scores of people from widely different backgrounds. Graham’s story, written through the eyes of his father, speaks of the enormous legacy left by a boy who never spoke. A story that raises provocative questions about the “invisible lines of connection” that make us human.

In 1910, when Olaf F. Larson was born to tenant livestock and tobacco farmers in Rock County, Wisconsin, the original barn still stood on the property. It was filled with artifacts of an earlier time - an ox yoke, a grain cradle, a scythe used to cut hay by hand. But Larson came of age in a brave new world of modern inventions - tractors, trucks, combines, airplanes - that would change farming and rural life forever. When Horses Pulled the Plow is Larson's account of that rural life in the early 20th century.

As if juggling a life with half-a-dozen kids, including triplets, isn’t enough, Steve Tate receives the life-altering news that one of his triplets, Hayes, has been diagnosed with brain cancer. The once-star collegiate football player finds himself fighting for his son’s life. This memoir takes you through the various challenges he faced raising a family of six kids and balancing a career, all while his son battled the odds. Both Steve and his high-school sweetheart, Savanna, found hope and happiness through the example of their 20-month-old son Hayes.

Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives in the clutches of a cruel foster family. He finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger, books that take him to new worlds he can only imagine. He begins to hope that one day he might have a different life. As he grows, Steve is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins and find his birth family. A light-skinned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, armed with only one clue. Yet nothing is as it appears.