A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

At the age of twelve, Ishmael Beah fled attacking rebels in Sierra Leone and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and finally, to heal. Time: "A breathtaking and unself-pitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all the innocence has suddenly been suck out. It's a truly riveting memoir." The Washington Post: "Everyone in the world should read this book... We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human."