Playing Catch with My Mother

Book excerpt: With this candid, poignant, and funny memoir, Greg Lichtenberg opens an extraordinary window on the changed landscape of masculinity. Born into an idealistic, egalitarian family, he sees his parents' marriage shattered by violence and divorce even as society begins to view all things male with suspicion. He becomes a boy who questions everything about being a boy: walking a fine line between schoolyard cruelties and the secret romances of eight-year-olds, between love of football and fear of aggression, between politically correct friendships with teenage girls and the explosive desires and confusions of sexual awakening. The result is a visceral book alive to the flash points where a young man discovers what his world now expects of him--and how he will respond.