Warhead: The True Story of One Teen Who Almost Saved the World, Henigson Jeff

Its 1986, and Jeff is an average fifteen-year-old: he thinks a lot about dating, he bounces around with his friends, and hes trying his hardest to get a car. Conversely, the world around him feels crazy: the United States and the Soviet Union are at glaring odds, with their leaders in a standoff, and that awful word, nuclear, is on everyones mind. Then, boom--Jeff learns that he has brain cancer and its likely terminal. Well, that puts a damper on his summer plans and romantic prospects, doesnt it?

Jeffs family rallies around him, but they are fiercely complicated--especially Jeffs father, a man who cant say I love you even during the worst of Jeffs treatment. So when the Starlight Childrens Foundation offers to grant Jeff a wish, he makes one certain to earn his fathers respect: he asks to travel to Moscow and meet with Mikhail Gorbachev to discuss nuclear disarmament and ending the Cold War. Nothing like achieving world peace to impress a distant father, right? Jeff has always been one to aim high.

Jeffs story is dark, but its also funny, romantic, and surprising. As his life swings from incredibly ordinary to absolutely incredible, he grapples with the big questions of mortality, war, love, hope, and miracles.