Biography For Boys

This book is a collection of true short stories that captures the childhood adventures of a mischievous boy who grew up in South Georgia. Several of the stories are near-death adventures, and each story has a value-based message that reinforces the importance of great decision-making in young people. The author acknowledges that he does not understand why God has chosen to continue his life, even though there have been multiple near-death experiences.

Boyhood in the 1960s and ‘70s was a time for exploration and mischief. Author Michael Tougias found more than his share of misadventures in the woods and on the water: some life-threatening, but others innocently hilarious. Over time - and after reading a multitude of adventure books - these experiences took shape in his quest to be a mountain man, owning a cabin in the forest and living off the land. Part of that dream would come true, but only after a family tragedy that shook his world and forced changes in his life.

Enter the riveting and volatile world of the Burger Bar Boys, Birmingham's infamous gang, in this relentless chronicle of power, violence, and redemption. Gangland Birmingham: The Rise and Fall of the Burger Bar Boys unravels the intricate narrative of one of the UK's most notorious gangs from their humble beginnings to their inevitable downfall.

Their idea was simple. Four NYU undergrads wanted to build a social network that would allow users to control their personal data instead of surrendering it to big businesses like Facebook. They called it Diaspora. In days they raised $200,000, and reporters, venture capitalists, and the digital community's most legendary figures were soon monitoring their progress. But as the months passed and the money ran out, the Diaspora Four fell victim to errors, bad decisions, and their own hubris.

Abdul is just seven years old when his parents are killed before his eyes. As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his three-year-old brother are forced to flee. Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease. Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life. Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars.

My Boy Jack is the extraordinary story of Kipling's search for his son. John Kipling was reported missing in the Battle of Loos on the Western Front in 1915. His father, Rudyard, had pulled strings to get his myopic son into the firing line. Devastated at the loss of his only son, Rudyard undertook the sad mission to find John's grave but tragically never succeeded in his quest.

Author, artist, and retired Deputy Head Jo Johnson was born and brought up in Greenock in the West of Scotland. Educated at Greenock Academy until the age of 14, he experienced a profound culture shock when the family relocated to Kilwinning in Ayrshire where he found himself in a much rougher school environment. Born into a devoutly Christian family, Jo had to balance the competing demands of "church and state" at an early age. His story is peppered with entertaining, poignant, and occasionally unpleasant memories of growing up in 1960s Greenock and 1970s Ayrshire.

When Andrew Bridge was seven years old, he and his mother - a mentally unstable woman who loved her child more than she could care for him - slid deeper and deeper into poverty, until they were reduced to scavenging for food in trash bins. Welfare officials did little more than threaten to take Andrew away, until a social worker arrived with a police escort and did just that while his mother screamed on the sidewalk.

Reflecting on the Beach Boys’ long, fascinating history, this book tells the story behind 50 of the band’s greatest songs from the perspective of group members, collaborators, fellow musicians, and notable fans. The band's music is as influential now as it was 50 years ago, and this retelling of how the iconic rock group found itself in the annals of pop culture couldn't come at a better time.

Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, and cereal packets - anything that might reveal a story. Caught between an ever-sensible but exhausted mother and a DIY-obsessed father fighting his own demons, Christopher takes refuge in words.

Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.

Waite "Schoolboy" Hoyt's improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. Based on a trove of Hoyt's writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend's untold story, entirely in Hoyt's own words. Over his twenty-three-year professional baseball career, Hoyt won 237 big league games across 3,845 2/3 innings—and one locker room brawl with Babe Ruth. He writes at length about the art of pitching and how the game and its players changed—and didn't—over his lifetime.

For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify “the boy in the woods,” a young man whose body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle's family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed. Consumed by guilt for how they'd treated him, Frank's eight siblings slowly came to understand that—like Jerry Garcia sang—he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back.

In The Boy Who Played with Fusion, science journalist Tom Clynes narrates Taylor Wilson's extraordinary journey - from his Arkansas home, where his parents fully supported his intellectual passions; to a unique Reno, Nevada, public high school just for academic superstars; to the present, when now 19-year-old Wilson is winning international science competitions with devices designed to prevent terrorists from shipping radioactive material into the country.

Gypsy Jane stood toe-to-toe with some of the most dangerous men in the land and won. Her blood-soaked march through the criminal ranks is a unique tale of villainy in modern Britain. In a murky world where shootings and stabbings were part of daily business, Jane never forgot her Gypsy blood and stayed loyal to a personal honour code that always gave her the edge. 'If today is the day I die, it's a good day to die,' she would tell herself in the full knowledge that every day of her violent life could well be her last.

Mesut L., geboren 1978 in Berlin-Wedding. Zweitjüngstes von vier Kindern einer alleinerziehenden türkischen Gastarbeiterin. Soldiner Straße, dritter Hinterhof, Parterre, Außentoilette. Und Deutschland dachte immer noch, der Türke wird ja sowieso bald abhauen. Dabei waren Kindergärten und Grundschulen schon teilweise zu 100 Prozent von Kindern mit Migrationshintergrund bevölkert. Bald bilden sich Jugendgangs, die die Kieze zwischen sich aufteilen.

After a decade-long relationship with a dominatrix he called Daddy, Emerson Whitney had begun to crave something besides submission. It came as a full surprise‚ submission had been so central to his early adulthood, to his trans identity. Dizzied by new questions of control and aging, and living in a tent while his relationship ends, Emerson stumbles upon an advertisement for a storm-chasing tour. For thrill seekers, it says. Unsure what else to do, he signs up.

Each chapter of "Trippin' through the Oil Patch" is a story all by itself. But each story links with the next, as the book reveals the life of transient laborers in the Rocky Mountain oil fields during the 1940s and 50s. While war mounted and raged in Europe and the Pacific, oil field kids moved with their dads and moms to one oil patch and trailer camp after another, chasing black gold to fuel a nation at war.

More Americans died in the Civil War than all other US wars combined - about 600,000 soldiers. And yet, many people still don't understand the history behind this four-year conflict that tore apart the United States. In this installment of the best-selling history series, young listeners move chronologically through 20 Civil War battles, beginning with the first shots fired at Fort Sumter to the final days at Appomattox.

Millions of Africans were enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade, but few recorded their personal experiences. Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is perhaps the most well known of the autobiographies that exist. Using this narrative as a primary source text, authors Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge share Equiano's life story in "found verse," supplemented with annotations to give listeners historical context.