Showing titles in History & Culture

Perhaps more than even Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, Ben Franklin is the Founding Father who best exemplifies the authentic American spirit and values. Eminent historian Thomas Fleming paints a lively portrait of this self-made man blessed with a wealth of talents: a best-selling author, the most important newspaper publisher in America, and a world-renowned scientist and inventor before he took on the task of becoming the true "Father" of American independence.

He remained firmly in the center of the action and at the center of controversy. That's what made General George S. Patton America's most colorful military leader and an endlessly fascinating subject. He's as dynamic in digital audio as he was in life in Alden Hatch's lively, accessible biography, which chronicles Patton from his early days growing up in Southern California to his triumphant march into Germany in World War II.

DeMaillie, pilot of a B-17, describes in riveting detail his successful bombing run from England to the industrial center of Germany. But things go very wrong on the return flight when his plane is struck by enemy fire and the crew is forced to parachute into Holland. Although a group of heroic Dutch resistance fighters try to hide him, the Nazis eventually capture DeMaillie and send him to a prisoner of war camp. There, he endures hunger, cold, and brutality until the Allies finally free him.

Some say he was the greatest warrior in history, building an empire that extended from Europe to Africa and on to India and Central Asia. In a stirring narrative, famed historian John Gunther tells the story of Alexander the Great who, at only age 21, became King of Macedonia and set off on a 12-year journey to conquer the known world and extend the boundaries of Greek civilization.

The right to vote is essential to any democracy. People have fought and died for that right. This book discusses why it is important to vote and how the electoral process works, from the nomination of candidates to primary elections to national elections. It also explains how the electoral college chooses the president. Students will gain valuable insight into civics through this book.

Established on a culture of entrepreneurship as well as religious and political freedom, South Carolina's foundations might be seen as a microcosm of the founding of America. This compelling audiobook provides the background and history of this colony which would become a major factor in the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, and later the Civil War.

The Constitution established the law of the land in 1789. A response to the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution provided the framework for our government and judicial system. This new audiobook explores the framer's goals and intents in the drafting of the document, as well as the debates, and examines at how and why our nation still lives by its principles.

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.

Thirty-five years ago, it was a modern-day, mysterious plague. Its earliest victims were mostly gay men, some of the most marginalized people in the country; at its peak in America, it killed tens of thousands of people. The losses were staggering, the science frightening, and the government's inaction unforgivable. The AIDS crisis fundamentally changed the fabric of the United States. Viral presents the history of the AIDS crisis through the lens of the brave victims and activists who demanded action and literally fought for their lives.

The Blackbird Battle has left all sides devastated. The wind spirit Suriel has disappeared. A hard winter is coming, and famine stalks the land. Kateiko Rin returns to her people, ready at last to rejoin her community, but the dangers of the unsettled times come raging to her doorstep. Kako is left with no choice but to battle the forces that seek to open a rift between the worlds. Leading an unlikely alliance that includes her new love Airedain and her old one Tiernan, Kako must risk all to try and stop the coming disaster.

Up until her 15th birthday, the most important thing in the world to Beatriz Mendez was her dream of becoming a professional dancer and getting herself and her family far from the gang life that defined their days - that and meeting her dance idol Debbie Allen on the set of her favorite TV show, Fame. But after the latest battle in a constant turf war leaves her gang leader brother, Junito, dead and her mother grieving, Beatriz has a new set of priorities. How is she supposed to feel the rhythm when her gang needs running and her mami can't brush her own teeth?

Best-selling author David Elliott explores how Joan of Arc changed the course of history and remains a figure of fascination centuries after her extraordinary life and death. Joan of Arc gets the Hamilton treatment in this evocative novel. Told through medieval poetic forms and in the voices of the people and objects in Joan of Arc's life (including her family and even the trees, clothes, cows, and candles of her childhood), Voices offers an unforgettable perspective on an extraordinary young woman.

Arkansas, 1984: The town of Griffin Flat is known for almost nothing other than its nuclear missile silos. MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - is a fear every local lives with and tries to ignore. Unfortunately that’s impossible now that film moguls have picked Griffin Flat as the location for a new nuclear holocaust movie, aptly titled The Eve of Destruction. When 16-year-old Laura Ratliff wins a walk-on role (with a plus-one!) thanks to a radio call-in contest, she is more relieved than excited.

An Iraqi woman who survived capture by ISIS. A Sudanese teen growing up in civil war and famine. An Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Army living under threat of a fatwa. They are among the five refugees who share their stories in award-winning author and photographer Susan Kuklin's latest masterfully crafted narrative. The five, originally from Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Iraq, and Burundi, give gripping first-person testimonies about what it is like to flee war, face violent threats, grow up in a refugee camp, be sold into slavery, and resettle in America.

Meet nine courageous young adults who have lived in the United States with a secret for much of their lives: they are not U.S. citizens. They came from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea. They came seeking education, fleeing violence, and escaping poverty. All have heartbreaking and hopeful stories about leaving their homelands and starting a new life in America. And all are weary of living in the shadows.

August 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited states and the US government from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. This book reveals how the 70-year-long fight for women's suffrage was hard-won by leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, and others.

By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Their brilliant coach had fashioned an unbeatable team from a group of boys born in the South and raised in poverty. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament.

Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In this vivid portrait of the systematic suppression of the African-American vote, critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow.

Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwów from Germany, the city remains a battleground between resistance fighters and insurgent armies, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine. Seventeen-year-old Tolya Korolenko is half Ukrainian, half Polish, and he joined the Soviet Red Army to keep himself alive and fed. When he not-quite-accidentally shoots his unit's political officer in the street, he's rescued by a squad of Ukrainian freedom fighters. They might have saved him, but Tolya doesn't trust them.

When her father descends into madness, Verity Pruitt and her little sister Lilah find themselves uprooted from New York, on an orphan train to rural Arkansas. In Wheeler, Lilah is quickly adopted by the town’s beloved schoolteacher - but Verity is not. Willing to do anything to stay close, she pawns herself off as a farmhand, but even charming farm boy Abel Atchley can’t completely distract her from the sense that something is not quite right in this little town.