Freedom Boy

Ben Mattlin lives a normal, independent life. Why is that interesting? Because Mattlin was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital weakness from which he was expected to die in childhood. Not only did Mattlin live through childhood, he became one of the first students in a wheelchair to attend Harvard, from which he graduated and became a professional writer. His advantage?

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine. In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer at her...

A “moving…dramatic” (David Ebershoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Danish Girl), and urgent call to action for immigration justice by a Nigerian asylee and global gay rights and immigration activist Edafe Okporo. On the eve of Edafe Okporo’s twenty-sixth birthday, he was...

Doug Wood has helped over 300,000 people transform their lives. Will yours be next? His incredible transformation journey began with himself. In 2009, he was broke in over 200 thousand dollars of debt, 65 pounds overweight, and on the brink of suicide. In this motivational book, he shares exactly what an average guy like him did to lose the debt, the weight, and overcome depression to change his life forever. Best of all, he offers a playbook for how you can, too.

1988 South Africa teeters on the edge of a state of emergency. Seventeen-year-old Bradley Steyn crosses Pretoria’s Strijdom Square and walks straight into a massacre. Barend Strydom, the notorious white supremacist ‘Wit Wolf’, is mowing down black bystanders relaxing in the square during their lunch break. Bradley cradles a dying man in his arms and, later, with reports of eight dead and sixteen seriously injured, he is brought face to face with the insanity of the nation.

Some call it Freedom Day; some call it Emancipation Day; some call it Juneteenth. Learn more about this important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States in this Step 3 History Reader. On June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of...