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

An often hilarious and always relevant memoir about one teen boy´s battle with brain cancer and his Starlight Children´s Foundation wish: to meet Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia and plead for nuclear disarmament and world peace. It´s 1986, and Jeff is an average fifteen-year-old: he thinks a lot about dating, he bounces around with his friends, and he´s 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 everyone´s mind. Then, boom--Jeff learns that he has brain cancer and it´s likely terminal. Well, that puts a damper on his summer plans and romantic prospects, doesn´t it? Jeff´s family rallies around him, but they are fiercely complicated--especially Jeff´s father, a man who can´t say I love you even during the worst of Jeff´s treatment. So when the Starlight Children´s Foundation offers to grant Jeff a wish, he makes one certain to earn his father´s 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. Jeff´s story is dark, but it´s 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.