My wife, Liz, tells me, not infrequently, that I am simultaneously an old man and a little boy trapped in the same body.

Perhaps that explains my great appeal for The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn & Hal Iggulden. It is not the Dangerous Book for Little Boys, mind you — Rather, it is “the perfect book for every boy from eight to eighty.”

And true to its word, The Dangerous Book doesn’t disappoint: From knots to camping to secret codes… from fossils to fishing to star gazing… from secrets of the ancient world to stories of courage and character… There’s enough to satisfy the hungry curiosity of every boy for many years to come.

Skimming through this book (actually, intending to skim, but catching myself fully reading — enthralled — on several occasions), I am reminded of what G.K. Chesterton once wrote:

A child’s instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting; a child always stands for the good militarism as against the bad. The child’s hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. The child’s hero is never the man or boy who attempts by his mere personal force to extend his mere personal influence. In all boys’ books, in all boys’ conversation, the hero is one person and the bully the other. That combination of the hero and bully in one, which people now call the Strong Man or the Superman, would be simply unintelligible to any schoolboy….

But really to talk of this small human creature, who never picks up an umbrella without trying to use it as a sword, who will hardly read a book in which there is no fighting, who out of the Bible itself generally remembers the “bluggy” [bloody] parts, who never walks down the garden without imagining himself to be stuck all over with swords and daggers–to take this human creature and talk about the wickedness of teaching him to be military, seems rather a wild piece of humour. He has already not only the tradition of fighting, but a far manlier and more genial tradition of fighting than our own. No; I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it.

In short, a book like this is the remedy to the sorry state of the culture today. It is a return to the good life — and as the authors state, how to “recapture Sunday afternoons and long summer days.” It’s the book I wish I had when I was growing up; and while I enjoy reading it now just for kicks, I look forward to sharing it with my kids.

You can purchase The Dangerous Book for Boys from Amazon.com.

Other similar books your kids (and you) might enjoy:

   

See also:

• Amazon.com interview with authors
• The Dangerous Book for Boys web site
• Conn Iggulden’s forum