This extraordinary memoir tells the true story of a former child soldier, who survived and escaped a violent life to become Africa's number-one hip-hop artist and an international ambassador for children in war-torn countries.

Karin Lowachee's debut novel is the engrossing story of a young boy's coming of age amid interstellar war, a riveting saga in the tradition of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. The merchant ship Mukudori encompasses the whole of eight-year-old Jos's world, until a notorious pirate destroys the ship, slaughters the adults, and enslaves the children. Thus begins a desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known space to the home of the strits, Earth's alien enemies. To survive, the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy. But no training will protect Jos in a war where every hope might be a deadly lie, and every friendship might hide a lethal betrayal. And all the while he will face the most grueling trial of his life... becoming his own man.

Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examine the growing and global use of children as soldiers. P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists. Singer writes about how the first American serviceman killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan—a Green Beret—was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy; how suspected militants detained by U.S. forces in Iraq included more than one hundred children under the age of seventeen; and how hundreds who were taken hostage in Thailand were held captive by the rebel "God's Army," led by twelve-year-old twins. Interweaving the voices of child soldiers throughout the book, Singer looks at the ways these children are recruited, abducted, trained, and finally sent off to fight in war-torn hot spots, from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He writes about children who have been indoctrinated to fight U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; of Iraqui boys between the ages of ten and fifteen who had been trained in military arms and tactics to become Saddam Hussein's Ashbal Saddam (Lion Cubs); of young refugees from Pakistani madrassahs who were recruited to help bring the Taliban to power in the Afghan civil war. The author, National Security Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, explores how this phenomenon has come about, and how social disruptions and failures of development in modern Third World nations have led to greater global conflict and an instability that has spawned a new pool of recruits. He writes about how technology has made today's weapons smaller and lighter and therefore easier for children to carry and handle; how one billion people in the world live in developing countries where civil war is part of everyday life; and how some children—without food, clothing, or family—have volunteered as soldiers as their only way to survive. Finally, Singer makes clear how the U.S. government and the international community must face this new reality of modern warfare, how those who benefit from the recruitment of children as soldiers must be held accountable, how Western militaries must be prepared to face children in battle, and how rehabilitation programs can undo this horrific phenomenon and turn child soldiers back into children.

In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven year old Sudanese boy, living in a small village with his parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. But as Sudan's civil war moved closer—with the Islamic government seizing tribal lands for water, oil, and other resources—Jal's family moved again and again, seeking peace. Then, on one terrible day, Jal was separated from his mother, and later learned she had been killed; his father Simon rose to become a powerful commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, fighting for the freedom of Sudan. Soon, Jal was conscripted into that army, one of 10,000 child soldiers, and fought through two separate civil wars over nearly a decade. But, remarkably, Jal survived, and his life began to change when he was adopted by a British aid worker. He began the journey that would lead him to change his name and to music: recording and releasing his own album, which produced the number one hip-hop single in Kenya, and from there went on to perform with Moby, Bono, Peter Gabriel, and other international music stars. Shocking, inspiring, and finally hopeful, War Child is a memoir by a unique young man, who is determined to tell his story and in so doing bring peace to his homeland.

The inspiring story of an immigrant's struggles to heal old wounds in the United States, this is the sequel to When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip's extraordinary, award-winning memoir of life in wartime Vietnam.

Indoctrination -- May Day celebration -- Changes -- The Aryan -- Nazi exhibitions power -- Catching the Nazi fever -- Fall harvest -- One people, one Reich, one leader -- September 1939, World War II -- The war expands and home front efforts intensify -- The Russian front -- Children's evacuation -- January 1943, Regensburg -- Bombing casualties -- My last time with papa -- Victory lost -- Hell on Earth, October 1944 -- Tomorrow may never come -- 1945, going home -- War's end, 1945 -- Running from the enemy -- War's aftermath -- Revelations -- The gentleman soldier -- No more secrets -- Man's inhumanity to man, life goes on -- Crossing the line -- 1945 to 1947 coping -- Wither thou goest, I will go -- Another world, a land of peace -- Arrival -- Red tape before marriage.

In Berlin in 1939, Michael Tradowsky celebrated his fourth birthday with his parents by helping his father tack up blackout paper over their windows. Germany was at war. For the next six years, the Tradowsky family endured the nightmare of the German home front. Intense and powerful, War Children shares the incredible saga of an ordinary German family during World War II. Looking back from the vantage of seventy years, Michaels memoir directly confronts how his childhood experiences, despite his parents attempt to give him a normal upbringing, were shaped by an epoch of rampant evil under Hitler. Michael shares how each member of his family had his or her own way of fighting against the regime. His courageous and outspoken aristocratic mother was determined to protect her son from Nazi brainwashing and sacrificed everything but her love and honor to keep her children alive. His father, a promising theater director, rubbed shoulders with the great entertainers of the timeuntil his refusal to join the Nazi Party destroyed his aspirations. But perhaps Michaels love for his baby sister exemplifies the tragedy of a childhood spent in war, for her very life depended on him carrying her to the bomb shelter. From winding roads twisting through the tall pines of the Black Forest to trucks crammed with refugees, War Children offers a sobering testimony for children victimized by war, past and present.