Biography For Boys

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.

We think of perception as a passive, mechanical process, as if our eyes are cameras and our ears microphones. But as neurobiologist Susan R. Barry argues, perception is a deeply personal act. Our environments, our relationships, and our actions shape and reshape our senses throughout our lives. This idea is no more apparent than in the cases of people who gain senses as adults. Barry tells the stories of Liam McCoy, practically blind from birth, and Zohra Damji, born deaf, in the decade following surgeries that restored their senses.

Ira Harris was taken from his family by representatives from the Board of Education trying to prove Negroes were inferior to whites during desegregation. His story happened in America during the turbulent 1960's. His mother was told she had freedom of choice to send him to any school she wanted! When the time came, his mother was told Negroes had no rights. He was forced to attend a white school because representatives from the Board of Education were trying to prove Negroes were inferior to whites in an effort to stop desegregation.

At the onset of World War II, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in concentration camps. Shigeru Yabu, a young boy from San Francisco, was forced from his home and moved, with his family, to the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp in Wyoming. A Boy of Heart Mountain is a poignant coming-of-age story about how one 10-year-old Japanese American boy named Shig tried to make sense out of being imprisoned for several years on the prairie.

Eddie Rickenbacker was a World War I Flying Ace, a Medal of Honor winner, and even a racecar driver. But did you know that his first attempt at flying was to ride his bicycle off the roof of his house while holding an umbrella?

Wes Streeting might have ended up in prison rather than in parliament. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills & A Fry Up he brings to life the poverty, humiliation and incredible struggle for them choosing whether to feed the meter and heat the flat, put carpet on the floor, or food on the table.

Eduardo F. Calcines was a child of Fidel Castros Cuba; he was just three years old when Castro came to power in January 1959. After that, everything changed for his family and his country. When he was 10, his family applied for an exit visa to emigrate to America and he was ridiculed by his schoolmates and even his teachers for being a traitor to his country. But even worse, his father was sent to an agricultural reform camp to do hard labor as punishment for daring to want to leave Cuba.

Anxious to be given a name as strong and brave as that of his father, a proud Lakota Sioux grows into manhood, acting with careful deliberation, determination, and bravery, which eventually earned him his proud new name: Sitting Bull.

George Rogers Clark was a famous general in the Revolutionary War, and his explorations served as the inspiration for his younger brother William, the leader of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Now you can read about the boyhood of Roger and share in the first adventures of this lifelong hero.

These stories are specific to one legendary riverfront plateau and one boy's journey, but are emblematic of immigrant life and blue-collar aspirations during the heyday of American industry and its crash, foreshadowing one of the largest internal migrations in US history. Approximately six million baby boomers, like the narrator, fled the Rust Belt. Another six million remained and stories of their youth, struggles, and aspirations echo throughout this book.

Of the 16 million people who served in the Second World War, perhaps less than half a million are still alive (as of this writing). Regrettably, these veterans are currently dying at a rate of approximately 500 per day. Brookdale Creve Coeur is a local senior living facility in the suburbs of St. Louis that houses a number of these veterans. It also happens to be where the author's 85-year-old father recently moved. Places like Brookdale contain a treasure trove of remarkable and inspiring stories from World War Two.

An intensely beautiful, profound and poetic biography of the formative years of the dark prince of rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story, a portrait of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

The controversial founder of Vermont, Ethan Allan's story unfolds on the backdrop of 18th-century life in the New England frontier. In intercolonial disputes over land grants, Allen took a firm stance against the powerful colony of New York. Later he led the Green Mountain Boys in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. A hero to some, a traitor to others, Allen's story resonates with the military and political obstacles encountered by a colony and a nation fighting for freedom.

August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, dust choked, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. Eighteen years old, he’s been down the pits on and off for more than a decade, and now it looks like a life sentence. No unusual story, although Charles is a clever lad - gifted at maths and languages - and for a time he hoped for a different life. Many hoped.

The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-Year-Old Boy is the story of a wild band of boys living on a once-in-a-lifetime street. Most of us have a time and place in our childhood that sets the course for the adult we grow up to be. I found mine: Starmount Drive, Tallahassee, Florida,1977.

‘Annie’s Boy’ is a coming-of-age story as seen through the eyes of a boy and his mum living in Scotland in the 1970’s and 80’s where fear, violence and struggle was an everyday part of life. It is a story of hope and quiet courage and perseverance that will take you on an emotional roller coaster that spans over fifteen years of their lives and what they did to survive.

The Real Top Boys reveals the lives of the street gangs who have taken over, and now rule, dozens of corners of the UK's capital. Best-selling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us on a tour of the housing estates and volatile neighbourhoods where pride, rivalry and revenge are the codes people live and die by.

A coming-of-age story set against the rise of fascism, the collapse of democracy in Slovakia and Hungary, the attempted genocide of the Jewish people, and the eventual conquest of the Allied Forces over Nazi Germany, Escape to the Tatras tells the story of one child’s remarkable journey encompassing the essence of life before and throughout World War II.

For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the '80s was a confusing business. On the one hand, these were the heady days of George Michael mixtapes, Dallas on TV and, if he was lucky, the occasional Bounty Bar. There was his family, whose strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of 24, Sathnam made a discovery that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them.

Completely revised and updated for 2020, My 48 Years at Sea provides the reader with a fascinating look at the life of a merchant seaman in the 20th century. His adventures include harrowing stories of survival on storm-tossed ships, funny anecdotes of unforgettable characters encountered on his journeys and the rescue of stranded Vietnamese refugees looking for a better life.