Biography For Boys

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.

Raw, gritty, compassionate, surprising and darkly funny - Australian legend Jimmy Barnes' unforgettable childhood memoir. A household name, an Australian rock icon, the elder statesman of OzPubRock - there isn't an accolade or cliché that doesn't apply to Jimmy Barnes. But long before Cold Chisel and Barnesy, long before the tall tales of success and excess, there was the true story of James Dixon Swan - a working class boy whose family made the journey from Scotland to Australia in search of a better life.

The mockery invented by Philip’s father, because he was badminton-mad and useless (said father) at all else, lingered with him through school in Malaysia. It travelled with him on an Aeroflot to England in 1970, aged 18, functioning on adrenaline. It stuck through his navigation of parochial middle England—washing backsides in a mental hospital, law practice, sports, and professional and personal relationships.

Throughout the '80s and early '90s, Lizzie Webb inspired the nation to get up and move as TV-am’s resident fitness guru. The music featured in her routines shot to the top of the charts, resulting in hits for the likes of Take That, Sonia, and George Harrison. She also collaborated with Simon Cowell for several years. Filled with heartfelt stories of the wonderful people she has helped along the way, as well as fond reminiscences and hilarious stories from her time on breakfast TV, Mad About the Boys reveals the fascinating two sides to Lizzie’s extraordinary and inspiring life.

Born to a poor Mahar family in April 1891, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was a victim of casteism from his very childhood. He fought for the political rights of the Dalits at a time when India was being terrorised by the British. He was also the first ‘untouchable’ to receive college education as...

Join the Pro Football Hall of Fame in celebrating the legendary coach, announcer, and video game personality! This new biography is based on interviews with John Madden himself! Nobody knows more about football than John Madden does. His childhood revolved around sports. When an injury kept him...

Ever since Howard Carter uncovered King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, the young pharaoh has become a symbol of the wealth and mystery of ancient Egypt. This Who Was . . . ? explains the life and times of this ancient Egyptian ruler, covering the story of the tomb’s discovery, as well as myths...

An eight-year-old boy survives triple-limb amputation by freight train. One of America’s famous yet untold stories of overcoming the stigma of disability and responding with inspirational resilience. To change your perspective on life, listen now! Boy Interrupted takes the listener on Ricky’s remarkable journey of miraculous survival, the power of kindness, humor, mistakes, post-traumatic growth, and other surprises.

In his unflinchingly honest memoir, Mitchell Raff candidly recounts his journey to overcome generational trauma and break free from decades of addiction. With raw vulnerability, he lays bare his destructive coping mechanisms and the far-reaching consequences they wrought on his life and on those around him.

The powerful and timely story of Peter Hain's political life fighting South African apartheid and modern-day corruption. Peter Hain has had a dramatic 50-year political career, in Britain and his native South Africa. This is the story of that extraordinary journey, from Pretoria to the House of Lords. Hain vividly describes his anti-apartheid parents’ arrest and harassment in the early 1960s, the hanging of a close white family friend, and enforced London exile in 1966.

Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences...despite his best laid plans to be a good Muslim boy. By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran-Iraq war, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed 'temporary marriage' not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police....

Following on from the success of Victor Boys and Vulcan Boys, Tony Blackman, in collaboration with Anthony Wright, brings you Valiant Boys to complete the V Force set. This is a fascinating collection of personal accounts of operating Britain's first V bomber by aircrew and ground crew. The book tells the story from the aircraft's birth taking off from Vickers' tiny airfield at Wisley near Brooklands to its premature death from fatigue.

What would you do if a stranger told you your son was going to die? Silas is 10 years old when the headaches start. When the diagnosis arrives, his parents are told they have until Christmas...maybe. And so begins Sarah Pullen's battle to save her son, against doubting doctors and insurmountable odds. This story about love and loss traces her family's journey from that first day at the hospital, battling a tumour they named Bob, through Silas' death and beyond.

From the depths of financial despair to the glittering celebrity world of the rich and famous, Theo Fennell's journey has been anything but predictable. With humour, candour and self-depreciation, Fennell charts the highs and lows of his remarkable career, from dealing with hardened criminals to designing for Elton John, Lady Gaga and Madonna.

The story of one of the most controversial figures in all of hip-hop history, Dummy Boy tells the tale of Tekashi 6ix9ine and his meteoric rise to fame. In tracing Danny "Tekashi 6ix9ine" Hernandez's life from Bushwick to the heights of the rap scene, Complex reporter Shawn Setaro illuminates the story of the young rapper who forged an alliance with a notorious street gang to bolster his image and boost his internet clout.

If you ask people about their earliest memories, most will recall holidays and family parties. But for Arthur, many of his earliest memories include going with his parents to regular hospital visits and staying overnight for blood transfusions. These treatments have been a frequent part of his life since birth because he has beta-thalassemia major: a rare genetic disorder that reduces his body’s ability to produce enough healthy red blood cells.

Country Editor's Boy picks up where Hal Borland's classic memoir High, Wide and Lonesome left off: with Borland, on the cusp of adulthood in the early twentieth century, making his way in an eastern Colorado town that still retained all the flavors of the Old West. Borland's father, the editor of a local weekly newspaper, was working to help his publication transition along with the town around him. At the same time, young Hal was experiencing dramatic social and economic change in his own way.

Orphaned by losing his mother at three and his father–who went missing at eight–Sydney author Francis Ravel Harvey avoided the Welfare State by being raised by four older sisters in the colorful environs of Sydney in the 1930s. The search for his cultivated English father is a constant thread throughout the book and reaches an amazing and heartbreaking conclusion when the author finally uncovers the truth surrounding his father’s death.

On a balmy Townsville night in 1944, young serviceman Warwick Meale is found beaten to death under a bridge. The army and police do not, or will not, conduct a proper investigation and history forgets the killer - until now. Nearly 80 years on, Warwick's descendant Jonathan Butler dusts off the case and chases the leads that were there all along. The Boy in the Dress exhumes secrets of life on the home front during World War II, where tensions between soldiers boiled over, new expressions of sexuality flourished and the threat of invasion catapulted the status quo into disarray.

The author's young adulthood basically amounts to a how-to primer for addiction. Paranoia and impulsiveness, obsession, and manipulation. Throw in compulsion, false pride, fear and dishonesty, all driven by self-centered thinking. The gateway behavior for all the others. Blessed with a good memory, almost granular for certain events and circumstances, Mike Matson turns his journalist's eye on his own past and the result is an honest, unflinching look at his decades-long struggle with addiction.