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The Wonder of Boys | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Gurian
Publisher: Tarcher
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $2.31
You Save: $12.64 (85%)
New (51) Used (28) from $2.31
Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 21898
Media: Paperback
Edition: 10th Anniversary
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1585425281
Dewey Decimal Number: 649.132
EAN: 9781585425280
ASIN: 1585425281
Publication Date: September 7, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
In the thoughtful and provocative The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men, therapist and educator Michael Gurian takes a close look at modern boyhood. Gurian asserts that the biological and neurological differences between boys and girls need to be accounted for and nourished in order to raise healthy, happy boys. In discussing boy culture--and the roles of competition, aggression, and physical risk taking--the author concludes, "It's not boy culture that's inherently flawed; it's the way we manage it." If the natural, testosterone-based impulses of boys are squelched or ignored, Gurian posits, such biological truths may find their way to the surface in other, more negative behaviors. He suggests that boys do best when they are part of a "tribe," three families that include: a birth or adoptive family; an extended family of friends, teachers, peers, and mentors; and the "family" of outside culture, media, religious institutions, and community figures. The Wonder of Boys offers advice on how to understand and build strong father/son and mother/son relationships, stresses the importance of healthy discipline, and suggests methods of teaching boys about sex, relationships, and spirituality. Parents and teachers of boys will find this book to be an insightful read. --Ericka Lutz
Product Description
I n this edition of his parenting classic, Michael Gurian considers how the culture has changed in the ten years since The Wonder of Boys was first published, including the impact of the Internet.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 77 more reviews...
 A Great Book January 7, 2009
Holly T. Baxter (LA, CA, USA)
This book gave me lots of clarity about why my 6-year-old son does what he does. My husband says that it's not just about "boys" but about men as well and he found it really great to read to understand his own motivations!!! Raising my daughter was a totally different beast than raising my son, and I'm glad someone told me about this great resource. I highly recommend it.
 THE WONDER OF BOYS December 21, 2008
Linda L. Wyman (Spokane, WA USA)
There were some very interesting facts in this book, but I bought it for my 21 year old granddaughter. She has a 2 1/2 and 3/13 year old boy. It was not very lay person friendly.
Great book! December 13, 2008
Y.T. (VA, USA)
In the western culture people sometimes are so far off from the nature when it comes to raising kids in particular. This book (and some other good books on topic) is trying to accent the factors that shouldn't be ignored when raising boys. Boys and girls are very different in how they percieve the information, how they develop and how they are raised to be successful adults. Ignoring these facts is an ultimate road to nowhere.
 lots of redundancy, but some useful advice September 26, 2008
Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MA, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When my son was about to be born, I panicked, because I thought I would not know how to give a good upbringing to a boy. I have only a sister and my husband is an only child. We discussed the issue a lot and we sometimes had different views on how to deal with boys, to do everything to make our son happy and fulfilled. So - we decided to buy a book and chose "The Wonder of Boys".
The book is not bad, but it is not very good. First of all, there is nothing new in the notion that boys are different from girls and that testosterone is physiologically responsible for these obvious differences, boys being more competitive and aggressive etc. Many things described by the author are obvious and instinctive. I would be happy to see more scientific dissection of the differences, something similar to "Brain Sex" by Anne Moir and David Jessel (a really valuable book, by the way), but with the focus on children and the education of boys.
The "old-new" rules of the boys' education and need for the male presence in their lives, the importance of the group, sports and discipline, are nicely presented at the beginning, but later on the book gets very repetitive, full of redundant information and artificially blown out of proportion. Maybe the purpose was to make the reader memorize the rules subconsciously (after all, it is one of the therapy principles, I think). For me, it just made the book boring and I could not help thinking it would be much more useful in a form of an article or essay. It seems to me more like an introduction to Gurian's guidelines, more developed in his later books on various aspects of the boys' character and education.
There is some advice I found good there, though: the rules for disciplining the boys at different stages of life, the details of the father's role, the discussion on spanking, the teaching of morals and spirituality. I could do without superficial examples from the world cultures.
I did not find this book particularly challenging for feminism, on the contrary, I think it presents reasonably the roles of both parents and the methods for building the family life beneficial for the offspring, which happens to be male.
Altogether, I rate "The Wonder of Boys" at three stars, it is neither outstanding, nor hopeless, but the useful advice needs to be extracted from a lot of meaningless words and the book could only benefit from being more concise and to the point.
Fantastic Book August 31, 2008
H. N. Dupuy (Colorado)
As the mother of three boys I've read a lot of books to gain a better insight into their minds and hearts. This is by far the best book I've read on the subject. I understand some feminist types are offended by the notion that a father is an important (if not the most important figure) in a boy's life and cannot be replaced by the mother and they have attacked this author. To them I say, Get a life.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is not a wild-eyed, angry feminist.
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