“The Dangerous Book for Boys”, by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden

 

288 pages, William Morrow, ISBN-13: 978-0062208972

In our modern, Woke, never-do-anything-even-REMOTELY-dangerous world, how in the HELL did a book called The Dangerous Book for Boys ever see the light of day? (Perhaps because the daylight in question was in 2006?). Anyway, I would certainly not call this book literally Dangerous, yet I think I know what the author is getting at, as this book is written to allow boys to be boys and not apologize for it, g**damnit: go out and scrape your knee, camp in a field, build a treehouse, chuck some rocks, compare your hockey knowledge, learn about astronomy, dinosaurs, navigation, make paper hats, read poetry, quote Shakespeare (no, really, Shakespeare is to be found in The Dangerous Book for Boys). In this day and age it may be considered by some to be “dangerous” to teach boys to be men (and I say that unapologetically), but I feel we don’t need another generation of boys who can’t hammer a friggin’ nail. Hopefully more young men will read books such as this one and learn that it’s okay to be a boy (oh, and as for the Dangerous in the title, don’t be so damned literal: I suspect – but do not know – that it comes from the works of Alexander Pope who said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing”).