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Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Contributor(s): Beah, Ishmael (Author)
ISBN: 0374105235     ISBN-13: 9780374105235
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
OUR PRICE:   $21.60  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: February 2007
Qty:
Annotation: Unforgettable testimony that Africa's children . . . have eyes to see and voices to tell what has happened. And what voices! . . . No outsider could have written this book, and it's hard to imagine that many insiders could do so with such acute vision, stark language, and tenderness. It is a heart-rending achievement. -Melissa Fay Greene, "Elle."
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- History | Africa - West
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2006017101
Lexile Measure: 920
Physical Information: 0.86" H x 5.9" W x 8.56" (0.79 lbs) 240 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 1990's
- Cultural Region - West Africa
- Catalog Heading - Biographies
- Curriculum Strand - Biographies
Accelerated Reader Info
Quiz #: 112792
Reading Level: 6.1   Interest Level: Upper Grades   Point Value: 13.0
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
Why did you leave Sierra Leone?
Because there is a war.
You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?
Yes, all the time.
Cool.
I smile a little.
You should tell us about it sometime.
Yes, sometime.

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.


Contributor Bio(s): Beah, Ishmael: - Ishmael Beah, born in 1980 in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book has been published in over thirty languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in 2007. Time magazine named the book as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2007, ranking it at number three. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vespertine Press, LIT, Parabola, and numerous academic journals. He is a UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Advisory Committee; an advisory board member at the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; visiting scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University; visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights at Rutgers University; cofounder of the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); and president of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many panels on the effects of war on children. He is a graduate of Oberlin College with a B.A. in Political Science and resides in Brooklyn, New York.