Men of Iron offers an engrossing plot predicated on two formulas familiar in literature for young people. Roughly the first half of the novel features a "school story," the adventures of a young boy moving from the security of home into an initially alien environment to acquire an education. This part of the novel— modeled on Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), the best seller by Thomas Hughes that established the genre—features the trials and occasional joys of a central character who must establish his position in his peers' social order as well as accommodate the demands placed on him by adults. The tensions within and between the two worlds of peers and adults provide the central plot interest of the school story, producing in Men of Iron a plot replete with exciting, fast-paced action and adventure as well as subtle psychological insight into character and...