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

From Fr. Ignatius Harrison, Provost of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri:

I personally hope that the Holy Father’s wise and prudent Motu Proprio [Summorum Pontificum], and the thinking and experience that inform it, will be the start of a much needed new phase of liturgical study and development. The errors of judgment that were enshrined in the newer forms of the Roman rite are plain to see. Perhaps these can now start to be addressed in a more positive and constructive way than was sometimes the case in the past….

As regards the older form of the Roman rite, I rejoice that the Holy Father has now wisely taken us to a point that many of us believe should have been the case when the new rites were imposed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, i.e., that the newer forms would have better been presented as an addition to the older forms, an not as an obligatory substitute. If anyone takes the trouble to examine the relevant texts, it is abundantly clear that the Second Vatican Council mandated a prudent reform of the then existing Roman rite, not the creation of a new rite. If there had not been that strange attempt to suppress the older forms, an authentic (and I believe necessary) reform might have been quicker in the coming. One deemed it bizarre in the extreme that those forms of worship which had nourished the Church for so many centuries should suddenly be declared illegal. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has now revisited and deleted that bizarre embargo. In doing so, I am convinced that his intention is not ‘to put the clock back,’ so to speak. He wants to repair and rewind the clock, to ensure that it goes on ticking away, steadily and reliably, into God’s future.

This is but one comparatively small step on a very long path. There is another step which I hope and pray will come soon…. We have been promised a new and better English version of the ordinary form of the Roman rite of holy Mass. An accurate and dignified translation of the new rite is long overdue. Sad to say, the appalling ICEL translation in current use has already had so many bad effects in the life of the Church.

Here we have two very encouraging and edifying projects: a more worthy English version of the Mass, and a rediscovery of the spiritual riches of the Church’s Latin liturgical tradition. Here we have two necessary and significant steps on a long path. Let us pray that both will contribute to a more efficacious fulfillment of the Church’s unchanging mission — to bring the world to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to make Him better known, better loved, better served, and more wholeheartedly adored.