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The Boy Billionaire: Mark Zuckerberg In His Own Words
by George BeahmMark Zuckerberg, the youngest Person of the Year named by Time magazine since Charles Lindbergh in 1927, has grown in prominence as rapidly as the company he founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The public's appetite for insight into Facebook and its founder seems nearly insatiable. Curiosity abounds regarding Zuckerberg's personality and management style, since fictional Hollywood portrayals and Wall Street whispers have painted a broad-strokes portrait of the young CEO that is at best only a fraction of the truth.Given Facebook's current $58 billion market capitalization and 845 million worldwide users, there is clearly more to Zuckerberg than any over-simplified caricature could convey. The Boy Billionaire: Mark Zuckerberg In His Own Words is the first and only book to detail the visionary thoughts and opinions of Facebook's founder entirely through direct quotations from Zuckerberg himself. It is the most intimate and most authoritative look at the man behind Facebook's once-a-generation success, the tech heir-apparent to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.Like those two pioneering entrepreneurs, Zuckerberg has proven to be a calculating and sometimes ruthless strategist with a steadfast commitment to his vision. Facebook exists somewhere between a social utility and a model of 21st century business, leading next-gen tech companies through an economic climate still scarred by the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, but increasingly driven by the inevitability of a global marketplace built on social media technology.Facebook's potential is unknown, but the key to its success depends on Zuckerberg's own ideas and vision. This book serves up his most thought-provoking insights, as researched and chosen by George Beahm, the New York Times bestselling editor of I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words. The Boy Billionaire: Mark Zuckerberg In His Own Words provides crucial illumination of Zuckerberg and the company he's created, emphasizing insights, business strategies, and lessons learned. It is essential reading for people who seek innovative solutions applicable to their business, regardless of size, and makes an ideal gift or reference item for anyone interested in this newest of American business icon.
A Boy Called Dickens
by Deborah Hopkinson John HendrixFor years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child's dreams don't come true . . . As a child, Dickens was forced to live on his own and work long hours in a rat-infested blacking factory. Readers will be drawn into the winding streets of London, where they will learn how Dickens got the inspiration for many of his characters. <P><P>The 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth is February 7, 2012, and this tale of his little-known boyhood is the perfect way to introduce kids to the great author. Here is historical fiction at its ingenious best.
Boy Clinton: The Political Biography
by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.A New York Times Bestseller! Boy Clinton traces the formative influence of the hustlers and rogues who populated the hometown of the young, fatherless Bill Clinton all the way to the drug-trafficking, tax evading governor and lying, obstructing president he would one day become. Tyrrell's classic expose continues to offer a penetrating and often humorous glimpse into the checkered past of Bill and Hillary long before Monica, Benghazi, and the shady Clinton Foundation dominated the spotlight.
Boy Colonel of the Confederacy
by Archie K. DavisHenry King Burgwyn, Jr. (1841-63), one of the youngest colonels in the Confederate Army, died at the age of twenty-one while leading the twenty-sixth North Carolina regiment into action at the battle of Gettysburg. In this sensitive biography, originally published by UNC Press in 1985, Archie Davis provides a revealing portrait of the young man's character and a striking example of a soldier who selflessly fulfilled his duty. Drawing on Burgwyn's own letters and diary, Davis also offers a fascinating glimpseinto North Carolina society during the antebellum period and the Civil War.
The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood
by Roger RosenblattThe Washington Post hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as "a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing," and People lauded Kayak Morning as "intimate, expansive and profoundly moving." Classic tales of love and grief, the New York Times bestselling memoirs are also original literary works that carve out new territory at the intersection of poetry and prose. Now comes The Boy Detective, a story of the author's childhood in New York City, suffused with the same mixture of acute observation and bracing humor, lyricism and wit.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. A grown man now, he investigates his own life and the life of the city as he walks, exploring the New York of the 1950s; the lives of the writers who walked these streets before him, such as Poe and Melville; the great detectives of fiction and the essence of detective work; and the monuments of his childhood, such as the New York Public Library, once the site of an immense reservoir that nourished the city with water before it nourished it with books, and the Empire State Building, which, in Rosenblatt's imagination, vibrates sympathetically with the oversize loneliness of King Kong: "If you must fall, fall from me."As he walks, he is returned to himself, the boy detective on the case. Just as Rosenblatt invented a world for himself as a child, he creates one on this night--the writer a detective still, the chief suspect in the case of his own life, a case that discloses the shared mysteries of all our lives. A masterly evocation of the city and a meditation on memory as an act of faith, The Boy Detective treads the line between a novel and a poem, displaying a world at once dangerous and beautiful.
Boy Erased: A Memoir
by Garrard ConleyA beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding. <P><P>The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. <P>When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. <P>Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. <P>Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. <P>By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
Boy Erased: A Memoir
by Garrard Conley"The power of Conley’s story resides not only in the vividly depicted grotesqueries of the therapy system, but in his lyrical writing about sexuality and love.” —Los Angeles Times“This brave and bracing memoir is an urgent reminder that America remains a place where queer people have to fight for their lives... Boy Erased is a necessary, beautiful book.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to YouA beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding. The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
The Boy From Baby House 10: How One Child Escaped the Nightmare of a Russian Orphanage
by Alan Philps John LahutskyGripping expose revealing one of the last secrets of the Soviet empire: its abuse of children in state institutions.This is the affecting true story of a remarkable young boy named John Lahutsky. John, born in Russia in 1990, was afflicted with cerebral palsy, abandoned by his birth mother and consigned to certain death in the deplorable orphanages and asylums of Russia. He was discovered, living half naked and confined in an iron-barred cot for 24 hours a day. But he refused to succumb to the regime of abuse, and enlisted a range of people to help him escape. For three years he was under constant threat of being returned to an asylum but, after a series of miraculous coincidences and terrible disappointments, he moved to America. He has been able to start a new life and, now aged eighteen, is a full partner in this book, with his memories supplemented by outsiders who battled the system on his behalf. Life in these appalling institutions has remained a closely guarded secret. But the author has managed to gain unprecedented access and has uncovered a true portrait of a child-care system which was founded by Stalin but exists to this day.
The Boy From Baby House 10: From the Nightmare of a Russian Orphanage to a New Life in America
by Alan Philps John LahutskyIn 1990, a young boy afflicted with cerebral palsy was born, prematurely, in Russia. His name was Vanya. His mother abandoned him to the state childcare system and he was sent to a bleak orphanage called Baby House 10. Once there, he entered a nightmare world he was not to leave for more than eight years. Housed in a ward with a group of other children, he was clothed in rags, ignored by most of the staff and given little, if any, medical treatment. He was finally, and cruelly, confined for a time to a mental asylum where he lived, almost caged, lying in a pool of his own waste on a locked ward surrounded by psychotic adults. But, that didn't stop Vanya. Even in these harsh conditions, he grew into a smart and persistent young boy who reached out to everyone around him. Two of those he reached out to-Sarah Philps, the wife of a British journalist, and Vika, a young Russian woman-realized that Vanya was no ordinary child and they began a campaign to find him a home. After many twists and turns, Vanya came to the attention of a single woman living in the United States named Paula Lahutsky. After a lot of red tape and more than one miracle, Paula adopted Vanya and brought him to the U. S. where he is now known as John Lahutsky, an honors student at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a member of the Boy Scouts of America Order of the Arrow. In The Boy From Baby House 10, Sarah's husband, Alan Philps, helps John Lahutsky bring this inspiring true-life story of a small boy with a big heart and an unquenchable will to readers everywhere.
The Boy from Boomerang Crescent
by Eddie BettsIt&’s a long, hard road from the Nullarbor to the MCG.How does a self-described &‘skinny Aboriginal kid&’ overcome a legacy of family tragedy to become an AFL legend? One thing&’s for sure: it&’s not easy. But then, there&’s always been something special about Eddie Betts.Betts grew up in Port Lincoln and Kalgoorlie, in environments where the destructive legacies of colonialism – racism, police targeting of Aboriginal people, drug and alcohol misuse, family violence – were sadly normalised. His childhood was defined by family closeness as well as family strife, plus a wonderful freedom that he and his cousins exploited to the full – for better and for worse.When he made the decision to take his talents across the Nullarbor to Melbourne to chase his footballing dreams – homesickness be damned – everything changed. Over the ensuing years, Betts became a true giant of the sport: 350-plus games, 600-plus goals, multiple All-Australian nods and Goal of the Year awards, and a league-wide popularity rarely seen in the hyper-tribal AFL.Along the way, he battled his demons before his turbulent youth settled into responsible maturity. Today, the man the Melbourne tabloids once dubbed &‘bad boy Betts&’ is a dedicated husband and father, a respected community leader and an increasingly outspoken social activist.Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic and always honest – often laceratingly so – The Boy from Boomerang Crescent is the inspirational life story of a champion, in his own words. Whether he&’s narrating one of his trademark gravity-defying goals from the pocket, the discrimination he&’s faced as an Aboriginal person or the birth of his first child, Betts&’s voice – intelligent, soulful, unpretentious – rings through on every page.The very human story behind the plaudits is one that will surprise, move and inspire.Cover image © Kristina Wild
A Boy from Botwood: Pte. A.W. Manuel, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 1914-1919
by Bryan Davies Andrew TraficanteA proud Newfoundland soldier’s memoir gives unprecedented details of life as a German POW during the First World War. I’m going to tell my story. With those words, eighty-three-year-old Arthur Manuel set his remarkable First World War memoir in motion. Like many Great War veterans, Manuel had never discussed his wartime life with anyone. Hidden in the Manuel family records until its 2011 discovery by his grandson David Manuel, Arthur’s story is now brought to new life. Determined to escape his impoverished rural Newfoundland existence, he enlisted with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in late 1914. His harrowing accounts of life under fire span the Allies’ ill-fated 1915 Gallipoli campaign, the Regiment’s 1916 near-destruction at Beaumont-Hamel, and his 1917 Passchendaele battlefield capture. Manuel’s account of his seventeen-month POW experience, including his nearly successful escape from a German forced labour camp, provides unique, compelling Great War insights. Powerful memories undimmed by age shine through Manuel’s lucid prose. His visceral hatred of war, and of the leaders on both sides who permitted such senseless carnage to continue, is ferocious yet tempered by Manuel’s powerful affection for common soldiers like himself, German and Allied alike. This poignant, angry, witty, and provocative account rings true like no other.
The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1
by Yu Pei-YunFor fans of Persepolis; An incredible true story in graphic novel form, that lays bare the tortured and triumphant history of Taiwan, an island claimed and fought over by many countries, through the life story of a man who lived through its most turbulent times.Tsai Kun-lin, an ordinary boy was born in Qingshui, Taichung in 1930s Taiwan. In part 1 Tsai, in concert with the beautiful illustrations of Chou Jian-xin, depicts a carefree childhood despite the Japanese occupation: growing up happily with the company of nursery rhymes and picture books on Qingshui Street. As war emerges Tsai's memories shift to military parades, air raids, and watching others face conscription into the army. It seems no one can escape. After the war, the book-loving teenager tries hard to learn Mandarin and believes he is finally stepping towards a comfortable future, but little does he know, a dark cloud awaits him ahead.Part 2 opens with Illustrations reminiscent of woodcuts showing the soul-crushing experience of Tsai's detention and imprisonment. In his second year at Taichung First Senior High School, Tsai attends a book club hosted by his teacher and is consequently arrested on a false charge of taking part in an "illegal" assembly. After being tortured, he is sentenced to ten years in prison, deprived of civil rights for seven years, and sent to Green Island for "reformation". Lasting until his release in September 1960, Tsai, a victim of the White Terror era spent ten years of his youth in prison on an unjust charge. But he is ready to embrace freedom.
The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1
by Yu Pei-YunFor fans of Persepolis; An incredible true story in graphic novel form, that lays bare the tortured and triumphant history of Taiwan, an island claimed and fought over by many countries, through the life story of a man who lived through its most turbulent times.Tsai Kun-lin, an ordinary boy was born in Qingshui, Taichung in 1930s Taiwan. In part 1 Tsai, in concert with the beautiful illustrations of Chou Jian-xin, depicts a carefree childhood despite the Japanese occupation: growing up happily with the company of nursery rhymes and picture books on Qingshui Street. As war emerges Tsai's memories shift to military parades, air raids, and watching others face conscription into the army. It seems no one can escape. After the war, the book-loving teenager tries hard to learn Mandarin and believes he is finally stepping towards a comfortable future, but little does he know, a dark cloud awaits him ahead.Part 2 opens with Illustrations reminiscent of woodcuts showing the soul-crushing experience of Tsai's detention and imprisonment. In his second year at Taichung First Senior High School, Tsai attends a book club hosted by his teacher and is consequently arrested on a false charge of taking part in an "illegal" assembly. After being tortured, he is sentenced to ten years in prison, deprived of civil rights for seven years, and sent to Green Island for "reformation". Lasting until his release in September 1960, Tsai, a victim of the White Terror era spent ten years of his youth in prison on an unjust charge. But he is ready to embrace freedom.
The Boy From Clearwater: Book 2
by Pei-Yun YuThe "glorious" sequel to Freeman Award-winning The Boy from Clearwater After his imprisonment in Green Island, Kun-lin struggles to pick up where he left off ten years earlier. He reconnects with his childhood crush Kimiko and finds work as an editor, jumping from publisher to publisher until finally settling at an advertising company. But when manhua publishing becomes victim to censorship, and many of his friends lose their jobs, Kun-lin takes matters into his own hands. He starts a children’s magazine, Prince, for a group of unemployed artists and his old inmates who cannot find work anywhere else. Kun-lin’s life finally seems to be looking up... but how long will this last? Forty years later, Kun-lin serves as a volunteer at the White Terror Memorial Park, promoting human rights education. There, he meets Yu Pei-Yun, a young college professor who provides him with an opportunity to reminisce on his past and how he picked himself up after grappling with bankruptcy and depression. With the end of martial law, Kun-lin and other former New-Lifers felt compelled to mobilize to rehabilitate fellow White Terror victims, forcing him to face his past head-on. While navigating his changing homeland, he must conciliate all parts of himself––the victim and the savior, the patriot and the rebel, a father to the future generation and a son to the old Taiwan––before he can bury the ghosts of his past. P R A I S E ★ "Yu, Zhou, and King bear glorious witness to little-known tragic history by empathetically spotlighting an everyday superhero who survived—and thrives." –Booklist (starred) ★ "An accessible, timely account of Taiwan’s struggles for democracy and human rights as experienced through a personal lens." –Kirkus (starred) "Triumphant and rewarding." –Foreword
A Boy from Georgia: Coming of Age in the Segregated South (A\bradley Hale Fund For Southern Studies Publication)
by Hamilton Jordan&“The story of a young man waking to the fact that his family is on the wrong side of history.&”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution When Hamilton Jordan died in 2008, he left behind a mostly finished memoir. His daughter, Kathleen—with the help of her brothers and mother—took up the task of editing and completing the book. A Boy from Georgia—the result of this posthumous father-daughter collaboration—chronicles Hamilton Jordan&’s childhood in Albany, Georgia, charting his moral and intellectual development as he gradually discovers the complicated legacies of racism, religious intolerance, and southern politics, and affords his readers an intimate view of the state&’s wheelers and dealers. Jordan&’s middle-class childhood was bucolic in some ways and traumatizing in others. As Georgia politicians battled civil rights leaders, a young Hamilton straddled the uncomfortable line between the southern establishment to which he belonged and the movement in which he believed. Fortunate enough to grow up in a family that had considerable political clout within Georgia, Jordan eventually became a key aide to Jimmy Carter and was the architect of Carter&’s stunning victory in 1976, later serving as his chief of staff. Clear-eyed about the triumphs and tragedies of Jordan&’s beloved home state and region, A Boy from Georgia tells the story of a remarkable life in a voice that is witty, vivid, and honest. &“A delightful and inspiring coming-of-age story brimming with funny anecdotes, family mysteries, and political intrigue.&”—Hank Klibanoff, coauthor of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation
The Boy From Long Gully: Australia's unsung hero from the early 1900s Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
by Wilson McOristIn 1914, Richard Richards abandons his comfortable life as a science teacher in Australia, to join a support party for Ernest Shackleton, in a very unfamiliar place; the Antarctic. Due to unforeseen circumstances Richards and a number of his companions become stranded in the Antarctic. However, despite his comparative youth, and inexperience in polar conditions, Richards adapts and survives, unlike some of his companions. He becomes more than an integral member of the team; he takes over a leadership role. He demonstrates what humans can do to stay alive, against near-impossible odds. The Boy from Long Gully provides the reader with a thrilling insight into the mind-blowing and harrowing ordeal of twenty-two-year-old Richards. It is an utterly riveting story, one of the most amazing tales from a bygone era; the so-called Heroic Age in the Antarctic. Richard Richards is awarded the Albert Medal in 1923, for his heroism and gallantry in saving life in the Antarctic, the only Australian ever to be so honoured. However, with the Australian public today he is almost unknown. He is an unsung hero, but he ranks alongside Douglas Mawson in any yardstick of famous Australians from the early 1900s &‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration&’.
Boy from Nowhere: A Life in Ninety-One Countries
by Allan FotheringhamAs one of Canada’s pre-eminent newspaper and magazine journalists, Allan Fotheringham has met everybody from Bobby Kennedy and Pierre Trudeau to The Beatles and Nelson Mandela. Born in Hearne, Saskatchewan, in 1932, Allan Fotheringham has had a distinguished career. Dubbed "Dr. Foth," Fotheringhamgraduated from the University of British Columbia andhas worked for numerous news organizations, including the Vancouver Sun, Southam News, The Financial Post, Sun Media, the Globe and Mail, and most notably as a long-time columnist for Maclean’s.His career hastaken him to many places on almost every continent as a correspondent and allowed him to meet many renowned personalities, from Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan,and Brian Mulroney toThe Beatles, Pierre Trudeau, and Nelson Mandela.Forten years he was apanellist on the popular CBC-TV show Front Page Challenge, and he’s won many awards, includingthe National Magazine Award for Humour, a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing, and the Bruce Hutchinson Life Achievement Award.Time once described Allan Fotheringham as "Canada’s most consistently controversial newspaper columnist … a tangier critic of complacency has rarely appeared in a Canadian newspaper."
The Boy from Treacle Bumstead: A Country Lad's Journey from Reform School to National Service
by Ken SearsThis brilliantly written memoir takes the reader on a journey into the past, to a rural England long gone, when horses worked the fields and small boys spent most of their time outdoors. Ken Sears was born in 1934 to a poor farming family in Hertfordshire - the fifth child of what would be eleven. He learns how to fend for himself at an early age. His boyhood life coincides with wartime, evacuees and American GIs arriving in his home town of Hemel Hempstead (the Treacle Bumpstead of the title). At the age of nine he is caught stealing eggs and accused of killing a chicken (which he denies to this day) and is sent to reform school for five years. So begins a punishing existence, but it breeds a tough teenager, and after learning the trade of bricklaying he is called up to do his National Service in 1952. So begins his adventures in the Army, in Europe and Korea, where the ever-plucky Ken - who has an eye for the ladies and is always landing himself in trouble - finds not-always legal ways to make life that bit easier. After the Army he comes back to England and sets up a building business. From there he sees his home town change out of all recognition. The story is a characterful testament to the resourceful generation of the men who did National Service, fought wars, built towns and stood up to everything in their way. Kens story reads like Commando Comics meets Fred Dibnah.
Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Architect of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs
by Lou Dubose Jan Reid Carl M. CannonGeorge W. Bush calls Karl Rove boy genius and the man with the plan. Insiders call him the man behind the Republican ascendancy. Who is this guy? And what is the plan?
The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television
by Daniel StashowerThe world remembers Edison, Ford, and the Wright Brothers. But what about Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, an innovation that did as much as any other to shape the twentieth century? That question lies at the heart ofThe Boy Genius and the Mogul, Daniel Stashower's captivating chronicle of television's true inventor, the battle he faced to capitalize on his breakthrough, and the powerful forces that resulted in the collapse of his dreams. The son of a Mormon farmer, Farnsworth was bor...
The Boy Governor: Stevens T. Mason and the Birth of Michigan Politics
by Don FaberIn 1831, Stevens T. Mason was named Secretary of the Michigan Territory at the tender age of 19, two years before he could even vote. The youngest presidential appointee in American history, Mason quickly stamped his persona on Michigan life in large letters. After championing the territory's successful push for statehood without congressional authorization, he would defend his new state's border in open defiance of the country's political elite and then orchestrate its expansion through the annexation of the Upper Peninsula---all before his official election as Michigan's first governor at age 24, the youngest chief executive in any state's history. The Boy Governor tells the complete story of this dominant political figure in Michigan's early development. Capturing Mason's youthful idealism and visionary accomplishments, including his advocacy for a strong state university and legislating for the creation of the Soo Locks, this biography renders a vivid portrait of Michigan's first governor---his conflicts, his desires, and his sense of patriotism. This book will appeal to anyone with a love of American history and interest in the many, larger-than-life personalities that battled on the political stage during the Jacksonian era.
The Boy Grows Up: The inspirational story of his journey from broken boy to family man
by Richard McCannRichard McCann's account of his childhood became a massive UK bestseller. In it he told the harrowing story of how he and his sisters were left motherless when the Yorkshire Ripper killed his first victim, Richard's mother Wilma McCann. Just A Boy was praised for its unflinching and unself-pitying account of a neglected childhood at the hands of an abusive father and uncaring authorities. The Boy Grows Up is an account of how Richard used the success of Just A Boy to try and save his sister, and of his attempts to make sense of his past whilst learning more about the effects of traumatic childhoods and loss.
The Boy He Left Behind: A Man's Search for His Lost Father
by Mark Matousek"""I was four years old when my father came back to kidnap me,"" begins this gripping memoir about Matousek's search for James Matousek, the drifter father he never knew. Described by the New York Times as ""part reminiscence, part detective story, part spiritual musing,"" this memoir is more than the story of one man's search for his father; it is also a look at the meaning of life and how fathers contribute to that meaning. Growing up in a family of troubled women (Matousek's sister committed suicide when the author was 29), he describes the turmoil of growing up ""fatherless in America"" - an experience shared by millions of children in what sociologists have called the Age of the Absent Father - and the difficult, ultimately successful, struggle to figure out what being a man really means in an age of shifting definitions, evolving sexuality, and ""breaking out the man box"" of stereotyping and patriarchy. With the tension of a mystery story, the climax occurs when Matousek meets a man he believes to be his father. But is he? And does Matousek, who has reconciled with his mother as she lay dying, really care? These are just two questions leading to this memoir's surprising conclusion. "
A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student
by Elizabeth StoneIn 1995 Elizabeth Stone received an unexpected gift - a carton of notebooks, the journals of a former high-school student named Vincent. Dying of AIDS at the age of forty, Vincent willed his diaries to his former ninth-grade teacher, asking her to turn his life into a book. Stone weaves her own life story through excerpts from Vincent's diaries. As Vincent comes to terms with the deaths of friends and with his own approaching end, Stone is helped to make her own peace with loss and death as a part of life.
A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student
by Elizabeth StoneA “touching and heartfelt” true story about loss, memory, and a remarkable bond between an English teacher and one of her former students (Booklist). One morning, a box was delivered to Elizabeth Stone’s door. It held ten years of personal diaries and a letter that began: Dear Elizabeth, You must be wondering why I left you my diaries in my will. After all, we have not seen each other in over twenty years . . . What followed was an extraordinary year in Elizabeth’s life as she read Vincent’s diaries and began to learn about the high school student she had taught in Brooklyn twenty-five years before. A Boy I Once Knew is the story of the man Vincent had become and one woman’s journey to understanding him more deeply—and along the way, understanding herself. With his diaries, Vincent becomes a constant presence in Elizabeth’s household. She follows his daily life in San Francisco and his travels abroad. She watches him deal with the deaths of friends in the gay community during the AIDS epidemic. She judges him. She gets angry with him. She develops affection and compassion for him. In some ways, she brings him back to life. And in doing so, she becomes the student, and Vincent the teacher. He forces her to examine her life as well as his, challenges her feelings and fears about death—and ultimately, proves to her that relationships between two people can deepen even after one of them is gone. “A meditation on memory and how a story can be a form of immortality.” —Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club