Brat

Fans of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends will love this beautifully written, entertaining, and emotionally honest memoir by an actor, director, and author who found his start as an 80s Brat pack member. Most people know Andrew McCarthy from his movie roles in Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, Weekend at Bernie's, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture. In his memoir Brat: An '80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favor of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life. Filled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.

With hundreds of thousands of current and former military brats in the United States, their lives as children of service members are surprisingly little documented. Reading about the experiences of fellow brats can help these children of warriors understand both themselves and the unique world in which they were raised. Learning of the challenges that these children face will also help the general population consider how to honor and to help those whose lives were shaped by the military without volunteering or being drafted. This book explores the military brat experience as reflected in novels intended for adults, adolescent fiction, autobiographies and biographies, and highlights the common elements: frequent moves, the ever-present sense of danger, the potential loss of the service member, and isolation from the larger civilian world. By understanding the lives of brats, we can better understand the very real costs--beyond the lives of service members themselves--that families bear in the name of our collective freedom and security.

Military brats' childhoods are often scarred by alcoholism, abuse, and an ever-present threat of a parent's loss to war. This eye-opening, sometimes shocking exploration tells what life is really like for the stepchildren of Uncle Sam. A new recovery group, Adult Children of Military Personnel, Inc., has been formed as a direct result of this book's publication.

Raising a brat is easy! Basically, it's only 11 easy steps. Follow them carefully, or perhaps even randomly, the results will amaze you. Or, ask yourself the filtering question of "Will it matter in ten years?" to guide you to raise an adolescent who can cope with life. The decisions you make and the perspective you keep on the day to day interactions with your child is incredibly powerful. 11 Easy Steps to Raise a Brat, The Great Adventure: The Parent Teacher Conference, A Middle School Kid Moved in Last Night, The Big Scary World, and It's Just an Illusion: Making the Working Mom Thing Look Easy will pose insights that will invite you to reflect on the guiding question of "Will it matter in ten years?" every time you pick which battle to attend to while raising your child. The "battles" can be called "interactions" and these interactions start with your child's first breath. Hang on! It's a wonderful adventure! You have an awesome task at hand. The task will create decisions, actions, and reactions that will help you create the perfect brat or raise a decent kid. Ultimately, the choice is yours. And your parenting decisions matter!