SWAGGER: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Age of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness, and Thug Culture

From Swagger: "At this very moment, through no fault of their own, our boys are caught in the vortex of four powerful, insidious, often invisible forces which conspire to rob them of their future." We medicate, discipline, suspend and expel our boys from school at quadruple the rate of girls. We let double the number of boys drop out of high school than girls, and of those boys who do graduate, they are far more likely than their sisters to be illiterate, to fail to go to college, or to drop out of college if they do go. Young American men are unemployed at the rate of their counterparts in Arab Spring countries. Pop culture hammers our boys with the message that manhood equals emotional numbness, gun violence, rape, and drug use. And we incarcerate more of our boys and men than any other country on earth, now or in human history.

SWAGGER is a wakeup call for parents about the real world our boys inhabit right now, but it offers solutions as well. From how to teach your boy humility (the swagger anti-venom), to "making your home a reading mecca," creating an expectation of college graduation, and how to teach your boy to be critical of the media onslaught in his life, this book is also packed with research-proven, parent-tested, teacher-approved practical solutions, delivered in the author's trademark no-nonsense, often humorous, take-charge voice.