Boys gotta be boys.

The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn and Hal Iggulden (HarperCollins, 288 pp., $24.95)

FOR decades this country has more or less tamely been taking instruction from the likes of Gloria Steinem, who advised that "we badly need to raise boys more like we raise girls." An entire generation of parents, weaned on feminist claptrap, dutifully set about cleansing males of their boyishness. As Christina Hoff Sommers documented in The War Against Boys, the feminists were able to bend the Department of Education as well as the National Education Association to their preposterous agenda. Competition was frowned upon; stories of adventure and derring-do were replaced by tales of care and compassion. Recess, a last redoubt for smothered boys to expend some of their energy, was abolished at some schools.

But of course, the idea that boys could be just like girls, if only we would abandon our silly prejudices and raise them identically, has run into a ditch. Even some of the feminists (the practical sort, not the theorists) who actually had children were astonished to discover that virtually straight out of the womb, little boy units and little girl units think and behave differently.

The American debut of Conn and Hal Iggulden's The Dangerous Book for Boys marks how far we have progressed from the feminist Dark Ages of a couple of decades ago. Here is an absolutely brilliant compendium of things that captivate the male of the species--and it is flying off the shelves.

Start with the title. Nowhere do the authors, who are brothers, explain why the word "dangerous" is included, but I suspect it's because they know the male mind. Any boy surveying titles on a shelf will be drawn to that word as a candidate is drawn to a microphone.

My 11-year-old son immediately set about making the "greatest paper airplane in the world" after opening to page 2. He certifies that the Iggulden model does surpass all previous efforts and we have one parked on the very top of a high bookcase to certify that it really flies well. It will require some advanced engineering to get the thing down.

In one- to four-page increments, The Dangerous Book for Boys provides instructions, drawings, narratives, and pictures on about 70 topics. Here boys can learn how to navigate at night by the stars, how to build a go-cart, what are the famous battles of history, how to teach your dog to play dead, how to make an electromagnet, the rules of English grammar, the phases of the moon, dinosaurs, five pen-and-paper games, baseball's most valuable players since 1931, how to make disappearing ink, the basics of first aid, and some things to know about girls. Every experiment--including how to make a periscope, how to grow crystals in a water glass, and how to make a timer and tripwire--was field-tested by the authors and usually requires only household objects, though some suburbanites like me might require multiple trips to the hardware store, as our supply of wood, small bulbs, and clothespins is not what it should be.

Like most moderns, we have our share of video games about the house and those clearly appeal to a part of the male psyche. Some are even educational. But what they fail to do and what this book does so well is nurture a boy's natural curiosity and desire to manipulate his environment. If you have a boy, were a boy, or even know a boy well, do you have any doubt that he would love to build a battery with "ten quarters, metal kitchen foil, blotting paper, two pieces of copper wire, cider vinegar, salt, an LED (light-emitting diode, available from hobby and hardware shops), and masking tape"? Do you doubt that he would be interested in learning the dots and dashes of Morse Code? Or that he would leap at the chance to make his own bow and arrows?

The Iggulden brothers appreciate a boy's curiosity about nature, history, mechanical things, and magic tricks. But they also gratify a boy's longing for stories of courage, extraordinary deeds, and sacrifice. Here a child can find the stories of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two climbers who scaled the west face of Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985 and almost lost their lives. Simpson broke a bone.

Here is an excerpt:

   The two men came to a cut in the ridge
   and Simpson started to climb down a
   face of sheer ice. He hammered in one of
   his ice axes and didn't like the sound
   it made. As he pulled one out to get a
   better contact, the other gave way without
   warning and he fell.

      He hit hard, his shinbone going
   through his knee and into the upper leg.
   As Yates climbed down, he [Simpson]
   tried to stand on it, appalled at the pain
   and grating of bones. The two men
   looked at each other in desperation.
   Simpson expected his friend to leave
   him. There was no other choice--a broken
   leg so far from civilization meant
   that he was dead.

Yates did not leave him, but I won't spoil the story. You will also find here the life story of Douglas Bader, the flying ace who lost both of his legs in a 1931 accident but nonetheless served heroically in World War II.

   In the fell clutch of circumstance
   I have not winced nor cried aloud.
   Under the bludgeonings of chance
   My head is bloody, but unbowed.

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley is reproduced in full in the section titled "Seven Poems Every Boy Should Know," along with "The Road Not Taken," "If," and "Sea-Fever," among others. Yes, there's a whiff of the English gentleman about this entire compendium--despite the additions of the Declaration of Independence and the "Mountains of the United States." The famous battles are a bit skewed toward English history. The Somme, for example, is introduced this way: "The Somme was the river in France that Edward III had crossed just before the battle of Crecy. The area has had a great deal of British blood soaking into its earth over the centuries, but never more than on the first day of the battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916." This clearly came straight from the English version of the book, published last year. But that's no great fault.

A few minor quibbles: Some of the photographs and drawings have captions, others do not. The writing is not always crystal clear, and some of the explanations of large subjects (such as the earth's movement and the seasons) are a bit too brief.

Suggestion for the next edition: One subject that I have found to be of intense interest to boys is poisonous animals and plants. Whose venom is, ounce for ounce, the most deadly? (I've heard it's the black-widow spider, but the Igguldens can research the matter.) Asection on this would be welcome, I suspect.

The Dangerous Book for Boys is a celebration of boys--their eagerness, their curiosity, their energy, and their purity of heart. It nurtures their spirits and elevates their spongy minds with proudly and unapologetically masculine topics. Good show.

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist.