Biographies for Boys

Traces the life of the warrior king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, who conquered and united the known world of his time. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.

The Deep South of the late 1950s was another country: a land of lynchings, segregated lunch counters, whites-only restrooms, and a color line etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. White journalist John Howard Griffin, working for the black-owned magazine Sepia, decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. What happened to John Howard Griffin - from the outside and within himself - as he made his way through the segregated Deep South is recorded in this searing work of nonfiction. Educated and soft-spoken, John Howard Griffin changed only the color of his skin. It was enough to make him hated...enough to nearly get him killed. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity every American should read.

This omnibus edition contains two books of memoirs detailing some of the remarkable things that happened to Roald Dahl as a boy and young man.

Going solo, the second part of Roald Dahl's compelling and colourful autobiography, which he began in "Boy" is a marvellous account of Dahls's first job in Africa and his wartime exploits, including his amazing survival from a plane crash in the Libyan desert.

In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer desperate for adventure, college cash, and a way out of a dead-end job. For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly agreed to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents finally caught up to them in a bust at the Chelsea Hotel. For his part in the conspiracy, the twenty-year-old Gantos was sentenced to serve up to six years in prison. In Hole in my life, this acclaimed author of over thirty books for young people confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the end of his own youth. On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one intense moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a smuggler, and his time in prison. But running just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos--once he found himself locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell--moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how this newfound dedication helped him endure the worst experience of his life.

In 1996, 24-year-old Lance Armstrong was ranked number one cyclist in the world, but that October, tests revealed that advanced testicular cancer had spread to his lungs and brain. In this book, he reveals his journey from a 20% chance of survival, to victory in the 1999 Tour de France.

Munro was the ultimate eccentric; a real 'number-eight-wire' inventor. He took an original Indian motorbike and modified it in his shed so that it became capable of extreme speeds. With this bike he broke several international speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 1967 - a number of which stand to this day. This book, an abridged edition of the bestselling One Good Run - the Legend of Burt Munro, is for young readers aged 10-14 yrs. It cuts to the core of Munro's story, from small town Invercargill to heroic deeds in the USA. The emphasis is on thrilling narrative in this 'little guy beats the odds' story.

Tells the moving story of a young man who enlisted in the Australian army at just 14 years old and who died in the war four months after leaving his home country. It is a heartbreaking tale, also, of his mother who had to let him go and of his family who lost a son, brother, uncle and friend.

A below-the-knee amputation on both legs has not stopped Mark Inglis from living life to the max. He tells of his experiences trapped in an ice cave on Mt Cook, his recovery and rehabilitation after the amputation, his attendance at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, and his return to Mt Cook. Suggested level: secondary.