The first man I can remember ever admiring was Philip Panos, the scoutmaster of my Boy Scout troop, way back in the day. Panos was a retired admiral who, among other things, had been stationed in Hawaii in 1941, where he was taking a group of Sea Scouts (they had those back then) on a trip between the islands when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor—he witnessed the entire thing from an open boat in open water. As a scoutmaster he was the very model of what such a man should be, a guy who could go anywhere and do anything from rappelling down a cliff to setting broken bones to surviving and thriving in the wild with a broken knife and some pocket lint, and taught his boys how to do the same. I suspect that had I stuck with the Boy Scouts I’d have qualified for commando training; instead I discovered rock and roll and girls and suddenly I was too cool for Scouts, but I never lost my respect for the admiral and his determination to turn snot-nosed boys into capable men.

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What This Has to Do with Books: Recently there has been a wave of books and other entertainments devoted to the idea that we Y-chromosome types have strayed too far from the spirit and skills of our pioneer forefathers, that we’ve failed our sons by giving them Xbox instead of Bowie knives and watched them learn how to navigate cyberspace but not how to find their way out of the woods. The big seller last year was something called The Dangerous Book for Boys, a compendium of various skills and pranks that used to be part of every boy’s bag of tricks, but the shelves were flooded with books about building soapbox derby cars and wooden toys, how-to guides for folding paper footballs and sailing boats, and camping and survival guides galore (not to mention the popularity on TV of alpha guys like Bear Grylls and Les Stroud roasting lizards and chipmunks over open fires in No Man’s Land).

The idea seems to be that boys who never learn the masculine virtues grow up to be perpetually helpless and spineless man-children, but it’s not just a lack of skills that’s to blame. Boys, it is believed, also need exposure to the exploits of heroes, men of courage and fortitude throughout history whose examples will teach lads to live bravely, act nobly and, if need be, die with honor. This is not altogether untrue, and that’s where Neil Oliver comes in. A presenter with the BBC, Oliver has come out with his own handbook to heroism in the old-fashioned mode, Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (HarperCollins, 2009).

Oliver’s book looks, feels and reads like something from the first half of the last century, before the Teddy Roosevelt ideal gave way to the Benjamin Spock ideal. The illustrations are utterly retro, reminiscent of old primers and weekly readers, and the stories are pure boy. The exploits of the French Foreign Legion in Mexico, dying en masse but never surrendering to the overwhelming foe. Josiah Harlan, the inspiration for The Man Who Would Be King. Admiral Nelson dying at the Battle of Trafalgar even as his brilliant tactics defeated Napoleon’s navy and saved England from invasion. Poor, doomed Apollo 13. John Paul Jones and “I have not yet begun to fight!” The storming of Omaha Beach and the Charge of the frigging Light Brigade. And weaving between all these tales is the story of Scott of the Antarctic, from boy of humble means to famed explorer of the last frontier on Earth.

Oliver presents his tales with breathless enthusiasm and he is a decent storyteller, though prone to somewhat preachy asides about the aforementioned manly virtues demonstrated by his heroes. If we judge his book on what it does—that is, present exciting tales of real-life derring-do—then it’s worth the addition to the family library. If we judge it on what it’s trying to do, then its value is less certain. I was raised on a steady diet of this stuff, along with plenty of Kipling and Dumas and Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, and while at 12 I wanted to be Indiana Jones, at 18 I wanted to be Keith Richards. There is no guarantee that foisting this stuff on young minds is going to have the magical effect this new crop of retro-dads seems to want (I have a 14-year-old son; believe me, I know about this), and certainly it’s no substitute for parenting by example. I suppose what I’m saying is pick up this book and give it a shot, but don’t try to pass down your coonskin cap just yet.

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A Sad Note: Speaking of admirable men, however, one of them has just left us. Frank McCourt, author of the heartbreaking memoir Angela’s Ashes and its sequels ’Tis and Teacher Man, passed away on July 19 at the age of 78. A Pulitzer Prize-winner and now required reading in many high schools, McCourt’s story of a childhood spent in crippling poverty in Ireland is one of the most depressing books you’ll ever read, and one of the most beautifully written. McCourt was a man who knew that spinning straw into gold is a craft, not an art, and he did so with consummate skill and humanity. He will be missed.

John G. Nettles