By clicking “Accept,” you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies on your device as set forth in our Cookie Policy and our Privacy Policy. Please note that certain cookies are essential for this website to function properly and do not require user consent to be deployed.

On My Honor

The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America

New Release

Contributors

By Kim Christensen

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$39.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around February 11, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

From a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, the shocking rise and fall of an American institution.

Since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has been the nation’s premier youth organization, espousing self-reliance and honor. More than 100 million Americans have been Boy Scouts, from Bill Gates to Martin Luther King Jr. Today, however, Scouting faces an existential threat of its own making: more than 82,000 former Scouts have filed claims alleging they were sexually abused—seven times the number of similar allegations that rocked the Catholic Church two decades ago.  

On My Honor untangles the full story of the Boy Scouts of America, tracking its creation, growth, influence, and the massive generational trauma it has caused. Using the iconic institution to tell a story of American values over the last century, the book grapples with America’s changing understanding of what it means to “make men.”        

This riveting story of power and abuse, religion and politics, scandal and justice, is brought to life by groundbreaking research and an unforgettable cast of characters.    

  • “Christensen’s powerful and troubling On My Honor chronicles how the Boy Scouts of America for generations portrayed itself as a hallowed institution that transformed boys into men — even as it secretly let child molesters operate unchecked within its ranks, damaging tens of thousands of children it claimed to be helping.”
    Cameron McWhirter, co-author of American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15
  • “Kim Christensen helped bring accountability to the Boy Scouts of America for its decades-long cover-up of sexual predators within its ranks. In On My Honor, Christensen deploys the exceptional investigative and narrative skills that won him multiple Pulitzer Prizes, delivering an absorbing, dismaying and meticulously researched account of how what was once a revered American institution betrayed tens of thousands of boys in its care.”
     
    Martin Baron, retired top editor at the Washington Post and the Boston Globe
  • “Christensen’s masterful reporting leads to a disturbing but unavoidable conclusion — the Boy Scouts of America must take its place in the Hall of Shame alongside tobacco companies, the Catholic Church, Purdue Pharma, and the NFL for burying a dangerous truth just to protect its brand. On My Honor is a devastating indictment.”
    Martin J. Smith, author of The Wild Duck Chase and Going to Trinidad

On Sale
Feb 11, 2025
Page Count
336 pages
ISBN-13
9781538726730

Kim Christensen

About the Author

Kim Christensen spent more than 40 years writing for newspapers, starting with the Dayton Daily News in his hometown in Ohio and capping his career as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, at the Oregonian in 2001 and at the Orange County Register in 1996, for investigations of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and of fertility fraud at University of California, Irvine. He lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife Christina, a former newspaper and magazine editor.

Learn more about this author