GROWING UP OAKLAND The “Battle Royale,” a cruel practice among the southern gentry in the antebellum South, saw blindfolded black boys thrown into a room to slug it out until only one boy was left standing. Don Dunbar’s “Battle Royale” came in the late sixties, when his stepfather, who Don called “the meanest man I’ve ever known,” threw him into a room with a much bigger boy. “I got my ass whipped pretty good,” Don recalls, “but my fear of another was put to rest.” The lesson was one of many that would serve Don well as he took to the “killing fields” of Oakland’s drug trade from the mid-eighties to early nineties, where he established a booming operation and built a reputation that remains intact to this day. The brutal death of his brother would usher in a new chapter in Don’s life. But Don would discover that getting out of the drug trade is easier said than done. Growing Up Oakland is the story of Don Dunbar, L’il Man, and traces his path from childhood to homeless drug user to notorious drug dealer, and finally to family man, minister, and legitimate businessman. It recounts in detail the journey through the underbelly of Oakland’s drug war, with its viciousness and prodigious loss of life, as it ultimately charts a course towards one man’s redemption and service. (Don Dunbar Growing Up Oakland)

Growing Up Oakland

Biographies & Memoirs

Dunbar, Don

True Crime

Next Revelation Pr

In the tradition of The Gatekeepers, a veteran counselor provides the missing key to the college admissions door with insider wisdom about how admissions committees think, and the thirteen fatal mistakes that can ruin an application. When Don Dunbar was a college counselor for Phillips Academy, Andover, in the 1980s, he got to sit in on the meetings where the nation’s top colleges decided whether to admit his students. Prep school counselors no longer get this kind of astonishing access, but in those meetings, Don discovered a little-known key to college admissions that still holds true today. Many applicants look alike, based on their grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, so colleges want something more: They want applicants with character. Most of us know what character means, but not in the way that admissions officers define it. Admissions officers have tremendous integrity, and to them, character equals what a student will contribute to his or her community, good or bad, over the next four years. Don explains the concept of character in terms that high school students can understand, using examples from his thirty years of working with kids. He shows readers how to avoid the thirteen fatal character mistakes that even the brightest students make when applying to college and democratizes the admissions process, making his advice available to all students.

What You Don't Know Can Keep You Out of College: A Top Consultant Explains the 13 Fatal Application Mistakesand Why Character Is the Key to College Admissions

Education & Teaching

Lichtenberg, G.F.

Higher & Continuing Education

Avery

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