History For Teens

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.

Author of the beloved Redwall series, Brian Jacques is one of the most popular fantasy authors in the world, with over 40 million books in print. This New York Times best seller will impress listeners with its original twist on the legend of the ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman.

How did the lowly potato plant feed the poor across Europe and then cause the deaths of millions? How did the rubber plant enable industrialization? What is the connection between malaria, slavery, and the outcome of the American Revolution? How did the fabled silver mountain of 16th-century Bolivia fund economic development in the flood-prone plains of rural China and the wars of the Spanish Empire? Here is the story of how sometimes the greatest leaps also posed the greatest threats to human advancement.

One day, 15-year-old Emily Dickinson meets a mysterious, handsome young man. Surprisingly, he doesn't seem to know who she or her family is. And even more surprisingly, he playfully refuses to divulge his name. Emily enjoys her secret flirtation with Mr. "Nobody" until he turns up dead in her family's pond. She's stricken with guilt. Only Emily can discover who this enigmatic stranger was before he's condemned to be buried in an anonymous grave. Her investigation takes her deep into town secrets, blossoming romance, and deadly danger.

The #1 New York Times bestseller and a USAToday bestseller! A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism--and antiracism--in America This is NOT a history book. This is a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race. The...

Best-selling author and renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong presents a concise and articulate history of Islam, the world's fastest-growing faith. Beginning with the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Medina and concluding with an examination of modern Islamic practices and concerns, Armstrong delivers an unbiased overview. She contends that no religion is more feared and misunderstood by the Western world as Islam, and firmly challenges the notion that these two civilizations are on a collision course.

The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again. This is their story. For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped...

Have you ever seen a Shakespeare play and come away without fully understanding it? Or wished you had known the basis of the plot before seeing a play by Shakespeare? Are you studying Shakespeare? Would you like to increase your knowledge of the plays without reading the originals? Then these are the recordings for you!

The companion to Ken Burns’s magnificent PBS television series—updated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of a new, two-part Tenth Inning directed with Lynn Novick. The authors of the acclaimed and bestselling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American...

With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing...

Anne Shirley, the mischievous, carrot-topped waif of Anne of Green Gables, has grown into a lovely young woman who leaves the security of Prince Edward Island to enroll at Redmond College. There, she discovers a professor who believes education is wasted on women, ponders the security offered in marriage proposals, and a host of other questions of young adulthood.

From Jennifer Donnelly, the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of A Northern Light and Revolution, comes a mystery about dark secrets, dirty truths, and the lengths to which people will go for love and revenge. For fans of Elizabeth George and Libba Bray, These Shallow Graves...

New York Times and USA Today bestseller! New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson delivers the witty and pulse-pounding conclusion to the Truly Devious series as Stevie Bell solves the mystery that has haunted Ellingham Academy for over 75 years. Ellingham Academy must be cursed...

From the acclaimed Ojibwe author and professor Anton Treuer comes an essential book of questions and answers for Native and non-Native young listeners alike.

After being set adrift at sea, baby Mordred is found by fisherfolk who raise him as their own. One day, a beautiful, magical lady appears to carry him back to his birth-mother's cold castle. There, alone but for his faithful dog, he comes of age and learns the horrible truth about his identity. Everyone knows Mordred as the dark, evil son who kills the noble King Arthur. But what would it be like to be born as Mordred, an unwanted child with a dreadful destiny?

As Robert watches the townspeople's hostility toward the German Artist Hoffman build, he worries about his sensitive cousin Elliot's friendship with the artist. And he wonders more and more about the family secret everyone seems to be keeping from him - a secret involving Robert's father, a bomber pilot in Europe. Will Elliot's ability to detach himself from the turmoil around him be enough to sustain him when prejudice and suspicions erupt into violence? And can Robert find a way to deal with the truth about his family's past?

The winsome Anne Shirley is grown, has married her beloved Gilbert, and is the mother of six frolicsome children. Anne and her family experience some unimaginable events when a strange family moves into a nearby mansion. The Meredith family is comprised of two boys and two girls, a minister father but no mother, and a runaway girl named Mary Vance.

This laboratory-based, middle school science course covers a wide range of topics that are of interest to modern scientists. It starts by describing our current understanding of atoms, molecules, the chemicals that are necessary for life, DNA, and cells. These topics are all discussed in the context of history, explaining how specific scientific advances led to the scientific explanations that the students are being taught. This allows students to learn not only the current scientific understanding of these topics, but also how scientists reached that understanding.

Prior to the Civil War, the fastest mail between the West Coast and the East took almost thirty days by stagecoach along a southern route through Texas. Some Californians feared their state would not remain in the Union, separated so far from the free states. Then businessman William Russell invested in a way to deliver mail between San Francisco and the farthest western railroad, in Saint Joseph, Missouri - across two thousand miles of mountains, deserts, and plains - guaranteed in ten days or less.

Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, little six-year-old Peekay learns that small can beat big. Armed with this knowledge, he resolves to take on the injustices of his country, and sets his heart on becoming the welterweight champion of the world. Peekay starts to take boxing lessons, makes new friends, collects cacti, and plays the piano. Above all, he learns to think with his head and then with his heart. Peekay discovers that nothing can defeat the determination to be true to yourself: This is the power of one.