'Our planet's for big thinkers. That's why I feel so at home on it' Harvey Smith, an eighteen year old bilateral leg amputee, lives in East London with his sister, Jackie. It's an arrangement that is doomed to end when her new boyfriend, Alfonso Barrera, announces they are moving to Spain. Yet Harvey's concerns for his future are soon forgotten after reading the Arctic adventures of Simon Draper, a double leg amputee himself, who experienced phantom limb sensations so real he believed he could stand and run. Harvey is driven to replicate this experience and makes plans for his own journey. Yet he soon begins to question his motives and the demands he places on others. Can his desire for physical and mental rehabilitation be so easily resolved? Set against a backdrop of nineteen eighties political unrest, the story follows Harvey's trackless path towards independent adulthood, as he confronts not only his own disability but the unerring nature of life itself.

This is the story of a child growing up in the Mad Men era of the 1960's. Filled with humor, sadness, and harrowing incidents, the memoir reflects all the emotions of life one experiences growing up, in this case, with a single mom who lived in Los Angeles and a father who lived in a small town suburb of Atlanta, Georgia known as Tucker.

What makes a man? This is a question many men in our society today do not feel equipped to answer, because they were never initiated into manhood themselves. They do not know how to pass on authentic manliness to their sons, so boys get stuck in unending adolescence. Everyone suffers from the resulting crisis of male immaturity, and we see its effects everywhere in our society. Leaving Boyhood Behind shows how we can actually do something to address this crisis. Author Jason Craig, cofounder of Fraternus, a Catholic mentoring program for boys, walks through each stage of initiation into manhood, helping readers understand: • What rites of passage are and why they are necessary for men • Christ’s own rites of passage and initiation • What it means for a young man to put away childhood • The importance of belonging vs. isolation in the life of men • The important role both mothers and fathers place in initiation • Discipline and the masculine identity • Living the ultimate rite of passage, and much more “This book is an invaluable resource for all Catholics who care about the intellectual, physical, and spiritual development of the next generation of men.” — Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, author of Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality

By turns touching, funny, poignant, and painful, BOYHOOD chronicles the road to manhood through the personal narratives and poems of accomplished writers from around the world. "Though some of these more than 40 personal accounts convey the exquisite angst of the men's movement, the broad range of experiences should strike many chords".--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.