When I was eight or nine years old my parents gave me a copy of The First Book of Electricity. I was fascinated.

Even then the illustrations looked old fashioned to me, but it was great to see inside a telephone and find out how it worked, to read about the wires that carried electricity from rivers and dams to our house and back out again (Where DOES electricity go when a house is finished with it?)

I also loved my 1919 edition of The Book of Knowledge, a multi-volume young person's compendium of the world's culture and technology, absolutely up to date as of World War I.

All these books, like the tattered St. Nicholas Magazines that somehow also landed in my boyhood bedroom, were way dated but also completely fascinating. It was the 1950s, a time when boys and girls were reliably riveted by books. And comic books.

Memories of the lost books of childhood surfaced this week as I joyfully skimmed through The Dangerous Book for Boys newly published by the father and son team Hal and Conn Iggulden.

Conn Iggulden is known to readers of historical fiction for his "Emperor" series based on the life of Julius Caesar, which so far includes The Gates of Rome, The Death of Kings, The Field of Swords, and The Gods of War. Next up for Iggulden: Genghis: Birth of an Empire.

It makes sense that a writer who loves adventure on the grand scale would also be fascinated by the rules of rugby, famous battles, grinding an italic nib, building a workbench, or figuring out (see page 109) girls.

Explainers of the theory of evolution say that for humans, it's primarily culture that evolves. Genes, not so much. Culture gives us continuity and the skills, at least so far, to prosper as the world changes.

Human culture exists because we know how to teach the things we've figured out. If our kids get it, we merrily evolve. If we fail, well, the ants and the cockroaches will enjoy having earth to themselves.

When D. C. Beard published The American Boy's Handy Bookin 1890, he was consciously promoting a connection with the fast fading pioneer past. He knew that boys in cities were losing the knowledge of how to camp outside without a tent, make a fighting kite, skin a squirrel, or make a fish spear. His book tried to be the remedy for all that.

Beard went on to found The Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone, a precursor to the Boy Scouts. It was all about making forts and chanting things like:

Cut a notch, cut a notch, cut a notch soon
For we are the Sons of Daniel Boone.

Beard and the Igguldens share an impulse to preserve and promote knowledge. This makes their books not only exercises in nostalgia, but lessons in culture.

When the iconic Whole Earth Catalog appeared in the late 1960s it galvanized my self-centered generation of over-protected baby boomers. The massive paperback was instant do-it-yourselves inspiration in a time when things had long since become safe, smooth, and pre-packaged.

It was revolutionary to think of books as tools; to read what people were doing with the personal computer, the Foley Food Mill, composting toilets, organic farming, even the very idea of intentional community. That information helped my generation evolve, or coevolve as Stewart Brand would say.

And now this charmingly retro Dangerous Book for Boys joins the illustrious line up of books that really are for everyone of any gender who wants to make a battery, marble paper, read a map, break a code, grow a crystal, craft a bow and arrow, go-cart, bubble pipe, corn-stalk fiddle or pinhole projector. Or learn about mountains of the United States, pen-and-paper games, stickball, the Declaration of Independence, poker, rigging a sail boat, preserving insects, telling the age of a tree.

And yes, it's a heck of a lot of fun to be a boy. Or a girl, but I haven't yet read about girls on page 109, so I couldn't exactly say what's fun about them.

Aired Sunday June 24, 2007 at 10:55 am and Wednesday June 27, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Special thanks to Joan and Jeff Stanford of the Stanford Inn By the Sea -- Big River Lodge in Mendocino for loaning me their copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. HarperCollins hardcover without jacket $24.95. ISBN 9780061243585.

If room permitted, I would also have mentioned The Anarchist Handbook and How to Fix Your Volkswagon as further examples of my generation's fascination with tools and working knowledge.

The First Book of Electricity (1953) by Sam & Beryl Epstein. Franklin Watts hardcover out of print. Available in many versions. A good copy is available from Abebooks.com for $15. "What scientists think electricity is, how it is generated, how it flows through wires into our homes and is harnessed to light our lamps, heat our appliances and run our machines, and how it goes back to its starting point, probably miles away--all this is explained. Illustrated by Robin King."

The American Boy's Handy Book by D. C. Beard. Facsimile edition David R. Godine, Publisher. Paperback $12.95. ISBN 0879234490. Also available from Godine: The American Girl's Handy Book by the same author.

(From a defunct/cached page on the Internet): "To the Scouts who knew him, Daniel Carter Beard was 'Uncle Dan.' Like Seton and Baden-Powell, he was an accomplished illustrator. He was born in 1850 and grew up in Covington, Kentucky where he learned the many tales of Daniel Boone and the American pioneers. His illustrations and articles graced the pages of St. Nicholas Magazine and Youth's Companion. These articles and accompanying illustrations were later compiled into books. He taught art from 1883 to 1890 at the Women's School of Applied Design and was chosen to illustrate Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court.

"To keep alive the spirit of the pioneers, he formed The Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone. This group grew to become the largest boy's club in America. It developed into The Boy Pioneers in 1905. The boys were encouraged to keep an old unloaded gun as part of their fort. A fort was a brand of the club. The forts would keep records of their good deeds in protecting forests and wildlife by cutting notches in their gun stocks.

"Beard was quick to embrace the Boy Scout movement and was its first National Commissioner and Chairman of the Court of Honor. It was his idea to Americanize the Boy Scout fleur-de-lis by adding the American eagle and shield. He received the only gold Eagle badge ever awarded and the Roosevelt gold medal for distinguished service. He was the president of the Society of Illustrators and of the Camp Fire Club. Near Mt. McKinley in Alaska is Mt. Beard that was named in his honor.

Books By Daniel Carter Beard:

American Boy's Handy Book, 1882, 1903
The American Girl's Handy Book, 1887
The American Boy's Book of Sport, 1890
Moonlight and Six Feet of Romance, 1892
The Outdoor Handy Book, 1896
Jack of All Trades, 1900, 1904?
Field and Forest Handy Book, 1906

Animal Book and Campfire Stories, 1907
Boy Pioneers and Sons of Daniel Boone, 1909
Boat, Building, and Boating, 1912
Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties, 1914
The American Boy's Book of Bugs, Butterflies and Beetles, 1916
The American Boy's Book of Sign's, Signals and Symbols, 1918
The American Boy's Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft, 1920
The American Boy's Book of Wild Animals, 1921
The Black Wolf-Pack, 1922
American Boy's Book of Birds and Brownies of the Woods, 1923
Do It Yourself, 1925
Wisdom of the Woods, 1926, 1927?
Buckskin Book For Buckskin Men and Boys, 1929
Hardly A Man is Now Alive, 1939 (autobiography)

Finally, the Wikipedia on D.C. Beard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Carter_Beard

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