Angry Young Men By Aaron Kipnis

Angry Young Men
Aaron Kipnis

Specific details about the worth of the book:
The book Angry Young men is easy to read and very informative. It gives the reader an insider’s view of the hardships of getting caught in the system. I believe Aaron Kipnis is an expert on the shortcomings of how, as a society, we handle the challenging youth. He has lived through the challenges and has studied the topic of “bad boys” in a traditional academic way. I felt hope while reading through this book despite the heavy subject matter, I think that Kipnis intended the reader to feel hope throughout the book because he knows firsthand the challenges and hardships that our young youth are experiencing today. Kipnis interweaves many suggestions for changes
writes from a personal and professional experience, sharing about his own troubled youth and the successful approaches he has used to help bad boys become good men. Kipnis was first incarcerated at the age of eleven when he ran away from home after a beating. He spent about seven years, a large portion of his childhood in foster care, temporary housing, and locked institutions or on the streets. Kipnis offers hope by telling parents what they need to know if their male adolescent is having trouble socially or emotionally, in school, or with drugs or gangs. This book also shows professionals how to build trust and affect change with troubled youth. It offers strategies for everyone who wants to help at-risk boys become strong, productive, caring, and compassionate
Two of my favorite sayings in this book and I quote the author are: “The worth of a boy is greater than his worst act” and “Though some make miraculous turns on a dime, most personal growth happens incrementally. An acorn becomes a sapling. It adds annual rings of growth. Then, bang, there’s an oak with acorns of its own to give back to the earth”. These quotes are beneficial to me both personally and professionally. Aaron concludes his book by adding a personal touch, which wasn’t surprising to me because it’s his personal story that really grabbed me throughout this book. By adding the story at the end regarding one of the neighborhood boys that he mentions in the beginning was a nice way to show the progression of his personal recovery process that he wrote about throughout his book. It reminded me of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings when people share their stories at the podium. They speak about “what it was like being drunk & drugged”, “what happened to help them get sober & stay sober” and “what their lives are like now without the substances”. His personal additions made reading about all the statistics worth it, which helped me to learn a lot about young males in