With a nod to the not so distant past when boys made up games in the outdoors and not playing games indoors, the book give advice on things every boy should know. This book has guides on making paper airplanes, tying knots, and even some history. Forget boys, I should be learning this stuff too! ( )

I can see where this book could appeal to boys, if not for the fact that so many of them are tethered to their game consoles and thus unable to enjoy it. But this is a good book to give to boys and send them outside to do things. It also has a lot of good trivia, poems, historical events, allusions, so on that boys (and just any educated person) should know. I would have enjoyed this book as a boy. Nowadays, I think it is more a book to browse at leisure rather than read straight through, which is what I ended up doing. Personally, I found it a little reminiscent of the Boy Scout Handbook I had when I was a scout (though the scout book had much better illustrations). It is also reminiscent of older manuals, which I am sure is intentional. There is a bit of everything here, and I think anyone can learn something, or maybe remember something they learned as a child. ( )

[Read this years ago. This randomly popped into my head, but I don't remember my rating.]