Dangerous Book for Boys

A friend of mine says this book is fantastic!

"I wanted to do the kind of book that we had lusted after when we were kids," said Conn Iggulden, who co-wrote the book with his younger brother Hal.
"My dad was born in 1923 and his father was born in 1850, and we had some old books in the house with titles like ’Chemical Amusements and Experiments’ and ’Fun With Gunpowder.’ The thing we didn’t have was a single compendium of everything we wanted to do. I remember endlessly looking through these (books), generally to find things that I could make explode or set on fire."
A big, affable, dark-haired thirtysomething who writes best-selling historical novels about the exploits of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, Iggulden exudes boyish enthusiasm.
He and Hal, a theater director, researched the "Dangerous Book" over six months in a garden shed, rediscovering the lost childhood arts of secret codes and water bombs and building simple batteries and pinhole projectors.
"Rule No. 1 was we either had to make it or do it - we’ve both read books where the author clearly hasn’t made a raft or whatever, and so the instructions don’t work," Iggulden said. "That meant we had to play marbles ... and skin a rabbit. A little bit grisly, that one. But then, we did make it into a stew and we did eat it.
"It was not a great stew," he admitted. "It was pretty rubbery."
Some parents may balk at encouraging their offspring to skin a rabbit _ or tan a hide, another skill imparted by the Iggulden brothers.
Conn Iggulden argues that "if you spend your life going to supermarkets, you should know where the meat comes from and exactly what’s gone into it for your eating pleasure. I think that’s worth doing once for just about anybody."
Sales figures suggest the "Dangerous Book" has struck a strong chord among adults concerned about the increasingly sedentary, regulated lives of today’s children - a society with computers in every classroom but often without climbing equipment in the playground.
source:
Boston Herald

Which reminds me.

Just out: a small, exploratory study showing that masculinity is good for men.

Who knew?

..............

Dangerous Book at HarperCollins
website