Friend of the blog and podcast Mike Malone has announced the release of his new excellent, authoritative Eagle Scout history: Four Percent – The Story of Uncommon Youth in a Century of American Life;**. (Listen to my interview with Mike on podcast 137.)
Mike is a well known writer, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. His articles and editorials have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Fortune, he was a columnist for The New York Times and he’s published nearly twenty award-winning technology books
He was kind enough to send me an advance copy of Four Percent(that will be available in August as an E-Book) and it’s the book of the Eagle Scout award because Mike is not only a skilled author; he’s an Eagle Scout;
You don’t so much earn the Eagle rank as you become an Eagle—a fact only the Eagles in the audience, and the Scout’s parents, fully appreciate. And in becoming an Eagle, you are changed forever.
To merely list the extraordinary achievements of a century of Eagle Scouts is to at least partially confuse cause and effect. It only proves the obvious fact that young people of achievement gravitate toward the opportunity for achievement.
What hasn’t yet been explained is why this particular award has come to assume a place so honored in American life that it alone, of all childhood achievements, follows its recipients throughout their lives; why it remains important as a résumé highlight decades after the honoree has aged out of the program; why newspapers still devote precious editorial space to coverage of Eagle service projects and Courts of Honor; and why at a man’s funeral, three score or more years after he earned the award, his eulogy will likely include the fact that he was an Eagle Scout.
Mike is an experienced Scouter with an impressive resume of leadership. Four Percent is much more than a simple history of the award in this centennial year of the Eagle Scout – it is a significant contribution to what it means to be an Eagle Scout. It is a “must read”.
Four Percent available in hardcover at Amazon
Also available in a Kindle Edition on Amazon
You don’t have to have a Kindle to read the book; Amazon offers free reading apps for just about any computer, smartphone or tablet.