Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Biographies

Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train to Texas.

When Temple Grandin was born, her parents knew that she was different. It wasn’t until years later that she was diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that makes communication difficult. Today, Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her career has revolutionized the livestock industry - each year, half the cattle in the United States are handled in cruelty-free facilities she designed. She is also a passionate advocate for autism, using her experience to prove that people with this disorder can have “normal” lives.

Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, 15-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Here, simple existence is a constant struggle, and Jack must learn to live hour to hour, day to day. Despite intolerable conditions, he resolves not to hate his captors and vows to see his family again. But even with his strong will to survive, how long can Jack continue to play this life-and-death game?

With over a dozen books now in the wildly popular Soup series, Robert Newton Peck started it all with this hilarious account of the nonstop mischief he and his best friend Soup got into as children in 1920s Vermont. You'll learn all about the time Soup taught Rob how to whack apples, only to wind up breaking a church's stained-glass window! Sure, the 2 pals have lots of fun doing things like rolling down a steep hill in barrels, but they just can't seem to stay out of trouble.

This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.

The Diary of Anne Frank is read and loved by children throughout the world. Yet few of those readers know what life was really like for the young Jewish girl before and after she wrote her famous diary.

Written in a lively yet sympathetic style, Anne Frank’s Story follows Anne Frank from her birth in Germany and her happy childhood in Amsterdam through the years she and her family spent in hiding from the Nazis, to her imprisonment and eventual death in the concentration camps.

In Pilgrims and Puritans, the authors begin in the year 1620 in England and end in New England in the year 1676. The book recounts the religious, political, and social history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its influence on our lives today. The narrative follows various groups of settlers from their departure from England through arrival in the New World and their often violent conflicts with the native peoples of the Americas. The authors examine a number of issues that arose in the new society that was founded and the rise and fall of the "city on a hill."

Hispanic America, Texas, and the Mexican War examines the history of the southwestern area of the United States. Topics covered include the settlement of the area that became the southwestern portion of the United States, detailing how it evolved from land settled by Native Americans, to Spanish territory, to states that were pawns between the North and South prior to the Civil War.

Andrew Jackson’s America examines the events and personalities, particularly President Andrew Jackson, that shaped the development of the United States during the first half of the 19th century. Learn about the influence that Andrew Jackson had on the way America developed, the industrial revolution and the beginning of the two-party system.

Nothing could hold him! He was the Escape King! He was The Great Houdini! His was a life life where fact and fiction blend into one amazing tale.This witty and insightful biography by Newbery Award Winner Sid Fleischman tells as much as it dares!

See him? That little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman? A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens. Everyone knew Charlie - Charlie Chaplin.

In Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War, the authors explain the occurrences in America during the thirty years between 1831 and 1861. This book discusses the attitudes and events that led up to and caused the Civil War in America, particularly the institution of slavery, the Abolitionist movement, and the rise of Abraham Lincoln.

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

Building a New Nation chronicles the development of the new government following the signing of the Constitution. It explores the political views of the young nation’s leaders as they struggled to form a strong nation, despite the foreign and domestic dilemmas that they faced. The authors describe the beginnings of the two-party system, the administrations of the first three presidents, and key decisions by each branch of the government that shaped the future of the country.

Twenty literary luminaries, ranging from Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare to Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain, are profiled in this entertaining and informative collection. Winner of A School Library Journal's Book of the Year Award, Lives of the Writers is both an indispensable reference tool and an exhilarating gossipfest. Author Kathleen Krull makes learning fun, painting realistic portraits of Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, Frances Hodgson Burnett, the Brontë sisters, Emily Dickinson, E.B. White, Jack London, Murasaki Shikibu, Miguel de Cervantes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and more. Krull serves up an outstanding introduction to the classics of literature for the whole family, while telling us all the real stories behind their writers.

From DaVinci to Rembrandt, van Gogh to Matisse, and Picasso to Warhol, you'll learn about both their artistic masterpieces and their personal messes. Fun and lighthearted, yet full of solid information, trivia, and provocative commentary, Lives of the Artists presents objective, 3-dimensional biographies of the world's great artists.

When noted English writer William Somerset Maugham set off for the South Seas to regain his health, he gathered the materials and wrote the stories represented here. These are among Maugham's best, and the best stories ever written about the exotic South Seas.

In 1986, Jean Fritz went to China and talked to survivors of the Long March. It is from their recollections and her own broad, personal knowledge of Chinese history that Fritz has written one of the most compelling accounts of the incredible 6,000-mile journey across China made by the Communist Army in 1934 and 1935. Fritz takes us on the route of the 60-mile-long First Front Army, the unit of Mao Zedong that wound its way through a terrain so perilous it was often more threatening than their battles with the enemy.

Children will enjoy listening to early evidence of young Clara Barton's calling such as when Patch, her beloved dog, is injured, and Clara nurses him back to health. They will sympathize with her boarding school days when she is snubbed because she is too shy to talk to other girls. But her shyness disappears when she assists the local doctor.

Travel back in time to the boyhood of one of the most popular poets of the early 20th century. Author of "Little Orphan Annie", "The Old Swimmin' Hole", and hundreds more poems, "Bud" Riley spent his childhood in mid-nineteenth century Indiana, where stagecoaches were a common sight, rope swings were the only thrill rides, and telling spooky stories by firelight was the best entertainment of all.