Showing titles in History & Culture

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the white beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.

*Winner of a Parents' Choice Silver Award* "In clear, measured tones, the author recounts Betty's discomfort with her home life and her work with the Housewives League...Shabazz differentiates between Betty and her mother, Ollie Mae Sanders, through pitch and projects the latter's frequent...

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

La historia verídica de una niña norteamericana de 12 años y un niño de Zimbabwe, a los que una carta les cambió sus vidas para siempre. Comenzó como una tarea escolar. Todos en la clase de Caitlin escribieron a un estudiante desconocido en algún lugar lejano. Martín tuvo suerte de...

Victoria woke one morning at the age of 18 to discover that her uncle had died and that she was now queen. She went on to rule for 63 years, with an influence so far-reaching that the decades of her reign now bear her name - the Victorian period. Victoria is filled with the exciting comings and goings of royal life: intrigue and innuendo, scheming advisors, and assassination attempts - not to mention plenty of passion and discord.

Alexandra Stewart's eidetic memory won't let her forget anything, ever. And finally she has a life worth remembering - a Spanish tutor who gives perfecto a new name, a roommate that could double as her sister, and a special role in a spy organization with secret headquarters at Brown University.

Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.

Both harrowing and life-affirming, the final novel from Carnegie Medal-winning author Mal Peet is the sweeping coming-of-age adventure of a mixed race boy transported to North America. Born from a street liaison between a poor young woman and an African soldier in the 1900s, Beck is soon orphaned and sent to the Catholic Brothers in Canada. Shipped to work on a farm, his escape takes him across the continent in a search for belonging.

A young Jewish pianist at Auschwitz, desperate to save her family, is chosen to play at the camp commandant's house. How could she know she would fall in love with the wrong boy?

This contemporary classic explores the role of boys who fought in the Civil War. No listener's vision of America’s most brutal and bloody war will be the same after listening to this audiobook.

This Series, in seven parts, tells the story of America from the earliest founding through the days of Woodrow Wilson and The Great War (World War I). In this volume, you'll hear stories of explorers and pioneers.

Natural and man-made disasters have the power to destroy thousands of lives very quickly. Both as they unfold and in the aftermath, these forces of nature astonish the rest of the world with their incredible devastation and magnitude. In this collection of 10 well-known catastrophes such as the great Chicago fire, the sinking of the Titanic, and hurricane Katrina, Brenda Guiberson explores the causes and effects, as well as the local and global reverberations of these calamitous events.

On tonight’s broadcast, award-winning chronojournalist Jace Vern travels to one of the most turbulent periods of the Twentieth Century to show us a key moment in human history, a moment that opened the door to all the worlds beyond the Old Blue and Green. The Apollo 11 mission changed the world forever, but did everything happen the way the history books tell us?

YALSA Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Based on a true story, this novel tells the heartwrenching story of a girl in the midst of civil war in Guatemala. In her remote Guatemalan village, 14-year-old Gabriela is known as Tree Girl for her habit of fleeing to the forest and climbing high to...

She's seventeen. She's been abused. She has a child. And she's HIV-positive. She is Ana, and this is her story. It begins the day she is born infected with HIV, transmitted from her young mother. Now she barely remembers her mamá, who died when Ana was only three. From then on, Ana's childhood...

Nora Lopez is 17 during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora's family life isn't going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn 17 and be on her own.

An informative introduction to the life of Cleopatra. For more than 2,000 years, plays, poetry, movies, and television have portrayed Cleopatra as an ambitious woman who used her beauty to seduce powerful men like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in a ruthless attempt to increase her own power and wealth. But is this the real Cleopatra, or one invented by male historians anxious to discredit an intelligent, competent woman who was the last great pharaoh of Egypt?

Twelve-year-old Johnny "No Good" Emmerstaff is an only child in a semi-rural section of Sanford, Florida in the late 1940s - until town snitch Tommy J drops in with the news that Johnny is getting a brother, an orphan named Josh. At first, Johnny doesn't know what to think of Josh. He's short, quiet, and he's butting into his life, sharing his bed, and eating his pancakes. But when Johnny's friend, Cully, picks on Josh, Johnny sticks up for him - his new brother.

As he prepares to recite the Declaration of Independence before his eighth grade social studies class in California, the thing Francisco has feared for 10 years finally happens. La migra, the immigration police, come to his classroom and pick him up for deportation to Mexico. Soon back in the United States with a "green card", Francisco struggles through adolescence, working two or three jobs a day and striving to excel at school.