Showing titles in History & Culture

In this stirring audiobook, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

At 16, Lady Jane Grey is about to be married off to a stranger and caught up in a conspiracy to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But those trifling problems aren't for Jane to worry about. Jane gets to be queen of England. Like that could go wrong.

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic - a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a 13-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building.

By day, 17-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie". When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender.

E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.

A true account of a group of African American men from Detroit who sought to change the life trajectory of young African American boys from something negative to something positive. Faced with the problem statement of "what life lessons would you teach a young boy about life survival in America if you only had one weekend?", the group of men set out on a course to make a difference.

Young Robin Longbow, subapprentice forester in the King's Forest of Nottingham, must contend with the dislike of the Chief Forester, who bullies Robin in memory of his popular father. But Robin does not want to leave Nottingham or lose the title to his father's small tenancy, because he is in love with a young lady named Marian - and keeps remembering that his mother too was gentry and married a common forester. Robin has been granted a rare holiday to go to the Nottingham Fair, where he will spend the day with his friends Much and Marian.

Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin. Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.

This compelling classic of a boy's coming of age during the Civil War is based on stories the author's grandfather told her about his own life.

When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six—a secret unit made up of the finest soldiers in the country, if not the world. I Am a SEAL Team Six Warrior is the dramatic tale of how Howard Wasdin overcame a tough childhood to live his dream and enter the exciting and dangerous world of US Navy SEALs and Special Forces snipers. This is Howard Wasdin's story of overcoming abuse and beating the odds to become an elite American warrior.

It is 1642 in the Puritan town of Boston. Hester Prynne has been found guilty of adultery and has born an illegitimate child. In lieu of being put to death, she is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her dress as a reminder of her shameful act.

Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation.

The Klondike gold rush, which occurred between 1896 and 1899, was one of the strangest outbreaks of "gold fever" ever to take place. With news of California's rush still fresh in their minds, thousands of men with get-rich-quick dreams hurried to stake out claims in the Yukon. But they did not count on the murderous weather...or the severe mountain passes that protected the gold.

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

hen did we start learning the scientific secrets of life? Step back to the Islamic Golden Age, when scholars ask questions about life science and medicine that will establish those fields. Chart a path through the Renaissance, as Leonardo da Vinci dissects cadavers by candlelight to learn human anatomy firsthand. In this first of four volumes spanning hundreds of years of scientific innovation and discovery, follow the evolution of life science up to the late 1800s, when a Dutch biologist finds a tiny infectious particle destroying tobacco crops and gives this particle a new name: virus.

Can species change? Or go extinct? In the eighteenth century, most people answer no to both questions. But in the century that follows, that certainty gets challenged as some people in Europe question the common belief that all creatures are the same as they’ve been since life’s creation. The Evolution of an Idea, the second volume of Discovering Life’s Story, opens with the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who attempts to create an organizing system for the myriad forms of life on earth.

Using riveting first-person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming reveals the makings of a monster: from Jones’s humble origins as a child of the Depression… to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers… to his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed "Jonestown”… to his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control.

Minamoto Yoshitsune should not have been a samurai. But his story is legend in this real-life saga. This epic warrior tale may sound like a novel, but this is the true story of the greatest samurai in Japanese history. When Yoshitsune was just a baby, his father went to war with a rival samurai family - and lost. His father was killed, his mother captured, and his surviving half-brother banished. Yoshitsune was sent away to live in a monastery. Skinny, small, and unskilled in the warrior arts, he nevertheless escaped and learned the ways of the samurai.

For fans of sea battles, adventures, and war stories like Unbroken, this is the incredible true story of a boy who helps to bring closure to the survivors of the tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and helps exonerate the ship's captain 50 years later. Hunter Scott first learned about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by watching the movie Jaws when he was just 11 years old. This was 50 years after the ship had sunk, throwing more than 1,000 men into shark-infested waters - a long 50 years in which justice still had not been served.