Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7717 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-13
• Released on: 2007-02-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels. The first two thirds of his memoir are frightening: how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine that the army makes readily available. But an abrupt change occurred a few years later when agents from the United Nations pulled him out of the army and placed him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly faded away, and readers see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate. Told in a conversational, accessible style, this powerful record of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are other ways to survive than by adding to the chaos.—Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
A book about child soldiers killing others during wartime is bound to have a powerful effect. Whether A Long Way Gone is moving in a fulfilling way, given the rescue of the author by the UN, or appalling in its cruelty will depend on the individual reader. The graphic violence will bother some readers, and remorse is not Ishmael Beah's strong suit. But the miracle remains: a teenager can be plucked from such an awful existence, transported to another nation, obtain a college degree, give literary voice to his horrific experiences—and teach us all something about humanity. That lesson is both light and dark, for as Carolyn See concludes, the book "says something about human nature that we try, most of the time, to ignore. Humans can be murderous, and that doesn't pertain in any way to religion or politics or ideology."
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Very impressive and inspiring
This book is disturbing and for that reason should be on the short list of required texts for college. Unlike the WWI and WWII war books which read like ancient history this one hits close to home as most of the events transpired within the last decade. The author does a great job of telling his story from a boys point of view with imagery that will give you nightmares.

If you cannot handle reading about graphic violence, rape, murder, wartime atrocities, then do not buy this book. Otherwise it is a good companion to the Blood Diamond movie which covers some of the same material.

Everyone Should Read This Book
This book about the boy soldiers of recent wars in Africa was especially meaningful for us because we lived in neighboring Liberia for 2 years just before the wars broke out. We were teaching school up "in the bush", and some of the boys thought it would be wonderful to be soldiers when they grew up. Well, they did not have time to grow up before the wars came and they were conscripted. The first hand account by Ishmael Beah matches what is published and/or shown about the war events in other countries. With the current attraction of our boys in the US to video "war games", they need to read what life is really like for boys in other countries. Parents need to know and make sure their children are aware of the plight of children in much of the world. It would counteract the huge desire for more things and entertainment here, and perhaps would cause our youth to be caring and benevolent to the many causes there are to help the unfortunate of the world.

A Long Way Gone
In this autobiography, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah tells the story of his Civil War experience. In his tragic story, Beah is trying to share his struggles with the world so that people are aware of what had happened to children in Seria Lone.
Throughout the book Ishmael looses his parents, sister, brother, and friends. For a month or so he is alone until he finds a new group of boys. These boys go though a lot together and end up becoming close friends. Later in the book they find a campsite that is willing to supply them with food and shelter, just what the boys need, in return for one thing; they had to become soldiers to help protect that campsite from the rebels. Ishmael had never planned on becoming a soldier so he was a little hesitant at first, but finally agreed. . As the months went on, Ishmael started to learn to love his life as a soldier and didn't want to give it up, until one day when he had no choice. Ishmael was picked up by a rehab center that helped children stay away from war. He finds out that life outside of the war is a lot different.
Ishmael did a great job in explaining his experience without leaving out any details. I felt his struggle and his emotion that came with it while I was reading his book.
Personally, I loved this book. Most of the time it was hard to put down. As a high school student, the book's descriptions were so vivid and realistic that it almost felt as if it were a movie. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good nonfiction book that is hard to put down.