When was the last time you saw a teenage boy with a book in his hand? A phone, alas, probably all the time. But a book? Unless a teacher stuck it there, you’re as likely to find a boy holding an abacus as reading a book.
But one man in North Carolina is out to change that. Andrew M. Dare (a pseudonym, because he disdains celebrity, and because he doesn’t actually exist, being in fact the creation of Tony Daniel and David Afsharirad) is an adventurer who has climbed mountains in Nepal, surfed and sailed around the world, and challenged his body in Ironman competitions. Now he has set himself what he considers the biggest, or most important, challenge of them all: making America literate again, starting with American boys. They’ve been badly served, he says, by a popular culture that teaches that “the future is female,” that perversity is our strength, and that belittles, ignores, or condemns young men as toxic brutes.
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