Showing titles in History & Culture

Paris, 1889. When the Exposition Universelle opens in Paris, 18-year-old Nathalie Baudin welcomes a much-needed break from the heartache of her friend's murder. The fair is full of sensational innovations, cultural displays, and marvelous inventions from around the world. But someone is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the guillotine with a gruesome display of their own: beheaded victims in some of the Exposition's most popular exhibits.

Gloria Steinem was no stranger to injustice even from a young age. Her mother, Ruth, having suffered a nervous breakdown at only 34, spent much of Gloria's childhood in and out of mental-health facilities. And when Gloria was only 10 years old, her father divorced her mother and left for California, unable to bear the stress of caring for Ruth any longer.

Told in alternating narratives that bridge centuries, the latest novel from New York Times best-selling author Samira Ahmed traces the lives of two young women fighting to write their own stories and escape the pressure of familial burdens and cultural expectations in worlds too long defined by men.

Wales, 1109. Three years ago, a warband raided Elen’s home. Her baby sister could not escape the flames. Her older sister fought back and almost killed the warband’s leader, Owain ap Cadwgan, before being killed herself. Despite Elen’s own sexual assault at the hands of the raiders, she saw a chance to live and took it. She healed Owain’s wound and spun a lie: Owain ap Cadwgan, son of the king of Powys, cannot be killed, not by blade nor blow nor poison. Owain ap Cadwgan has the protection of Saint Elen, as long as he keeps her namesake safe from harm and near him always.

The Whitsun Daughters is a story of three contemporary teenage girls - sisters and cousins - in a small Midwestern town, narrated by the ghost of a young woman who, over a century earlier, lived and loved on the same small patch of farmland the girls now call home. The book follows both the present-day story of the three Whitsun girls and the story of Jane Murphy a century earlier as they fight to assert their own desires in worlds determined to ignore and minimize them.

Despite her world of privilege, Hélène is inspired early on by the radical ideas of her progressive governess. Though her family tries to intervene, the seeds of revolution have already been planted in Hélène’s heart, as are the seeds of love from an unlikely friendship with a young jeweler’s apprentice. Hélène’s determination to find true love is as revolutionary as her attempt to unravel the truth behind the concealed murder that tore her family apart.

Her story begins...in Paris. The only daughter of the king's crown jeweler, Juliette marvels at the large, deep blue diamond Louis XIV has commanded her father to make shine like the sun. But Jean Pitau has never cut a diamond quite like this, and shaping it is a risky endeavor. As Jean spirals into depression, Juliette takes it upon herself to cut the stone and with every misstep brings her family closer to ruin.

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.

Gita Trelease's Everything That Burns is the transporting sequel to All That Glitter, hailed by NPR as a “soaring success”! Camille Durbonne gambled everything she had to keep herself and her sister safe. But as the people of Paris starve and mobs riot, safety may no longer be possible....

Es una pena ver a una nación tan brillante de personas asesinadas por nuestros antepasados sobre la codicia, el odio y la intolerancia por la sabiduría y la manera de como vivían los nativos americanos. A pesar de lo que las escuelas públicas enseñaban a nuestros hijos, los nativos americanos no eran los "salvajes", como aprendimos en la escuela.

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.

Vida Hazzard can see her future: aboard the heralded “Millionaire’s Ship of the West,” she’ll charm the young scion Fitzhugh Farrar, resulting in a proposal of marriage. But Vida didn’t plan on Fitz’s best friend Sal, a rough-around-the-edges boy with a talent for getting under her skin. Nor did she anticipate a hurricane dashing their ship to pieces, along with her dreams. Stranded on an island with both Fitz and Sal, Vida is torn between the life she’s always planned for, and a future she’s never dared to want.

Alex Schuler is your typical middle school student, except for one thing. He is being advised to and learning American history from all the presidents of the United States. Alex's grandfather gave Alex a unique book for his 10th birthday. When he reads it, all the presidents come alive. Alex has all the same issues in school and at home such as dealing with bullies, students cheating on tests, having to deal with chores, and an older brother. However, not every student can ask a president for help.

For two years, the terrible and bloody Civil War raged in the United States of America, tearing at the very fabric of its glorious founding. In the midst of utter turmoil, a young boy, Anderson Roach, longed to join his brother as part of the famed Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry. With his brother gone fighting for nearly two years, Anderson was now ready to leave the farm and prove himself by joining the ranks of men on the battlefield.

Haarlem, 1943: Die Jahre des Kriegs und der Besatzung haben Teuns Leben vollkommen auf den Kopf gestellt. Teun entdeckt nicht nur, dass sich sein Freund Jaap verändert hat und ihm etwas verheimlicht. Auch seine kleine Schwester, die geistig behindert ist, ist plötzlich in Gefahr. Gerade im richtigen Moment begegnet er Corrie und Betsie ten Boom. Doch dann sind die beiden verschwunden. Nun gerät sein Leben ganz durcheinander - erst als er Corrie wiedersieht, wird ihm so manches deutlich. Ein spannungsreicher historischer Roman für Jugendliche, der auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht.

The year is 1818. Rodrigo DeSilva is 12 years old, and he has just landed in Monterey, California. Here, he meets Kahulpana, a member of the Esselen tribe of Native Americans. Follow the adventures of Rodrigo and Kahulpana as they learn about each others' culture and defend the presidio against a land and sea attack by privateers!

This is an anecdotal approach to teaching high school students that history and economics are intertwined. The audiobook is designed to give the student a thumbnail sketch of a dozen events of merit in American history intertwined with the basic economic laws.

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.

Black Americans who have shaped their country and beyond: We are familiar with a handful of African Americans who are mentioned in American history books, but there are also countless others who do not get recognized in mainstream media. Their actions may not have appeared to shake the world, but their contributions to shifting American culture were just as groundbreaking.

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin - cheap, potent and originating from one small county on Mexico’s west coast, independent of any drug cartel.