Fist Stick Knife Gun - $12

Long before U.S. News and World Report named him one of America's Best Leaders and Oprah Winfrey called him "an angel from God," Geoffrey Canada was a small, vulnerable, scared boy growing up in the South Bronx. Canada's world was one where "sidewalk" boys learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher. In this candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner. "If you wonder how a fourteen-year-old can shoot another child his own age in the head and then go home to dinner," Canada writes, "you need to know you don't get there in a day, or week, or month. It takes years of preparation to be willing to commit murder, to be willing to kill or die for a corner, a color, or a leather jacket."

Reaching Up for Manhood - $12

Geoffrey Canada writes, "More and more I have become concerned with what boys think they should be, and what they believe it means to be a man." He explores, through passionately observed storytelling, what we are truly telling our boys about manhood. He lays out the little understood and intertwined history of drugs and marketing to inner city boys, a history that has led to consumption levels of "forties" and "blunts" that are excessive beyond excuse. Canada takes a hard look at the issues of too-early sex and, through a pointed story of his own sexual education on the streets, reminds us that the combination of the same old urges with new cultural forces and mores has resulted in a volatile sexual terrain for boys. He writes indelibly of the young boy he once was, one desperately needing a father's love, and of the crucial issues-fatherhood, mentors, self-esteem, faith, healing, and more-that must be negotiated as boys reach up for manhood. A moving and revelatory report by a dedicated father and gifted child advocate.