front cover of Building Character in the American Boy
Building Character in the American Boy
The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920
David Macleod
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004
Among established American institutions, few have been more successful or paradoxical than the Boy Scouts of America. David Macleod traces the social history of America in this scholarly account of the origins of the Boy Scouts and other character-building agencies, through which adults tried to restructure middle-class boyhood.

Back in print; First paperback edition.
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front cover of Building Character
Building Character
The Art and Science of Casting
Amy Cook
University of Michigan Press, 2018
What can we learn about how we understand each other and ourselves by examining the casting we find on stage and film—the casting we find perfect and the casting we find wrong? Building Character examines how the process of “casting” an actor in a part creates a character and how this can be usefully understood through deploying theories from the cognitive sciences. A casting director may match the perceived qualities of an actor with the perceived qualities of the character, but the combination is also synergistic; casting a character creates qualities. While casting directors do this professionally, all of us do this when we make sense of the people around us. This book argues that we build the characters of others from a sea of stimuli and that the process of watching actors take on roles improves our ability to “cast” those roles in our daily lives. Amy Cook examines the visible celebrity casting, such as Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman or Judi Dench as Bond’s M, the political casting of one candidate as “presidential” and another as “weak,” the miscasting of racial profiling and sexual assault, and the counter casting that results when actors and characters are not where or who we expect.
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front cover of Making Grateful Kids
Making Grateful Kids
The Science of Building Character
Jeffrey Froh
Templeton Press, 2014

If there was a new wonder drug on the market that got kids to behave better, improve their grades, feel happier, and avoid risky behaviors, many parents around the world would be willing to empty their bank accounts to acquire it. Amazingly, such a product actually does exist. It’s not regulated by the FDA, it has no ill side-effects, and it’s absolutely free and avail­able to anyone at any time. This miracle cure is gratitude.

Over the past decade, science has shown that gratitude is one of the most valuable and important emotions we possess, and it is a virtue that anyone can cultivate. In fact, researchers have developed many different methods people can use to foster an attitude of gratitude, and the science shows that many of them really work.

In Making Grateful Kids, two of the leading authorities on gratitude among young people, Jeffrey J. Froh and Giacomo Bono, introduce their latest and most compelling research, announce groundbreaking findings, and share real-life stories from adults and youth to show parents, teachers, mentors, and kids themselves how to achieve greater life satisfaction through gratitude. Most importantly perhaps, they expand on this groundbreaking research to offer practical and effec­tive common-sense plans that can be used in day-to-day interactions between kids and adults to enhance success and wellbeing.

Their unique, scientifically-based approach for producing grateful youth works whether these kids are very young ele­mentary school students or troubled teenagers. Not only does the purposeful practice of gratitude increase their happiness, but the research indicates that grateful kids also report more self-discipline, fulfilling relationships, and engagement with their schools and communities when compared to their less grateful counterparts. After reading Making Grateful Kids, parents, teachers, and anyone who works with youth will be able to connect more mean­ingfully with kids so that all parties can focus on the things that matter most and, in turn, create a more cooperative and thriving society.


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