Showing titles in History & Culture

Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age 12 to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his "brothers".

Born in poverty-stricken Albania, twin sisters Argita and Detina Zalli always dreamed of becoming doctors. Their parents scrimped and sacrificed, committed to giving them a better life. But then the unthinkable happened. In 1997, the government collapsed, plunging the country into anarchy and civil war. The twins' dream unraveled along with their homeland. Their parents had to find a way to leave and save their daughters' futures—not to mention their very lives.

Epictetus was brought as a slave to Rome, where he became a great teacher. His philosophy, called stoicism, was practical, not theoretical - aimed at relieving suffering here and now. And Epictetus knew suffering. Besides being a former slave, he was lame in one leg and walked with a crutch. Turning these obstacles to his advantage, Epictetus learned that lasting peace and happiness can only come from within. The Manual is a collection of Epictetus' essential teachings. It points the way to inner harmony and freedom, through all of life's storms and stresses.

The true story of the Edelweiss Pirates, working-class teenagers who fought the Nazis by whatever means they could. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean were classic outsiders: Their clothes were different, their music was rebellious, and they weren’t afraid to fight. But they were also Germans living under Hitler, and any nonconformity could get them arrested or worse. As children in 1933, they saw their world change. Their earliest memories were of the Nazi rise to power and of their parents fighting Brownshirts in the streets, being sent to prison, or just disappearing.

The year was 1981. Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot after leaving a speaking engagement in Washington, DC. The quick action of the Secret Service and medical professionals saved the president's life. Mere days after his near-death experience, Reagan's personal strength propelled him back into his presidential duties. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's historical thriller Killing Reagan, with characteristically gripping storytelling, this story explores the events of the day Reagan was shot.

For more than 200 years, the wreck of the Whydah (and the riches that went down with it) eluded treasure seekers, until the ship was finally found in 1984 by marine archaeologists. The artifacts brought up from the ocean floor are priceless, both in value and in the picture they reveal of life in that much-mythologized era, changing much of what we know about pirates.

One of the most important and least understood true stories of our nation, the fight for representation is an ongoing and epic quest to build the democracy sketched out in the Constitution but unfinished in the twenty-first century. With impeccable research and exhilarating prose, Represent tells the story of voting rights in the United States from the American Revolution up to the present day.

What makes a country fall to a dictator? How are authoritarian leaders - strongmen - capable of killing millions acquire their power? How are they able to defeat the ideal of democracy? And what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again? By profiling five of the most notoriously ruthless dictators in history - Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein - Kenneth C. Davis seeks to answer these questions, examining the forces in these strongmen's personal lives and historical periods that shaped the leaders they'd become.

In curiously parallel lives, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were both orphaned at an early age. Both were brilliant students who attended college - one at Princeton, the other at Columbia - and studied law. Both were young staff officers under General George Washington, and both became war heroes. Politics beckoned them, and each served in the newly formed government of the fledgling nation. Why, then, did these two face each other at dawn in a duel that ended with death for one and opprobrium for the other?

When the Dionne Quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, weighing a grand total of just over 13 pounds, no one expected them to live so much as an hour. Overnight, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie Dionne mesmerized the globe, defying medical history with every breath they took. In an effort to protect them from hucksters and showmen, the Ontario government took custody of the five identical babies, sequestering them in a private, custom-built hospital across the road from their family - and, in a stunning act of hypocrisy, proceeded to exploit them for the next nine years.

Who lived in Texas over a thousand years ago? In Porch Talk, John Erickson and his archaeologist friend Doug Boyd investigate this question while explaining the art and science of archaeology for middle listeners. On the Perryton ranch, John and his friends unearthed a ghost town that dated back to around 1300 CE. For more than twenty years, they worked together on this and other prehistoric sites, sharing a fascination for the ancient people who occupied the area. How did these people work, play, and survive?

Here are the real events that inspired Gary Paulsen to write Brian Robeson’s story in Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian's Hunt: a stint as a volunteer emergency worker; the death that became the pilot’s death in Hatchet; plane crashes he’s seen; and his own near misses. He takes listeners on his first hunting trips, showing the wonder and solace of nature along with his hilarious mishaps and mistakes. He shares special memories, such as the night he attracted every mosquito in the county, and how he met the moose who made it personal.

As a 14-year-old, he was Malcolm Little, the president of his class and a top student. At 16, he was hustling tips at a Boston nightclub. In Harlem, he was known as Detroit Red, a slick street operator. At 19, he was back in Boston, leading a gang of burglars. At 20, he was in prison. It was in prison that Malcolm Little started the journey that would lead him to adopt the name Malcolm X, and there he developed his beliefs about what being Black means in America: beliefs that shook America then and still shake America today.

This is the breathtaking adventure of the great Carthaginian general who shook the foundations of Rome. In the world's first "global" conflict, Hannibal Barca marched up and down the Italian peninsula for 18 years, appearing well nigh invincible to a Rome which began to doubt itself for the first time in its history.

When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows something's very wrong. She's insatiably hungry, her sister seems scared of her, and her parents whisper behind closed doors. She looks through her diary to try to remember, but the pages have been ripped out. Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest to find the truth, she must travel into the terrifying underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family - before it’s too late.

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth's oldest teachers: the plants around us.

Now in an audio edition, this acclaimed memoir tells the unforgettable story of a young boy's journey from a refugee camp in Sudan to Chicago, where his family survived on welfare. Mawi followed his father's advice to "treat people...as though they were angels sent from heaven" and realized his dream of a full-tuition scholarship to Harvard University. Updated with 14 black-and-white photos and a new epilogue.

Revised and updated with new information, this Jane Addams Award-winner is an in-depth examination of the Emmett Till murder case, a catalyst of the civil rights movement.

From the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles comes an exploration of a promising theory that when put to practice wreaked havoc on the world. An expert on communism, Richard Pipes follows the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the Cold War, and finally, to its deterioration and collapse.

Could any story be more inspiring than that of Joan of Arc, the courageous maiden who fought for the glory of France and God? Guided by what she firmly believed were visions of saints, this young Frenchwoman - still just 16 years old - led her people in battle against the British occupiers. Though she proved victorious in war, Joan ultimately became a martyr when some of her own countrymen betrayed her to the English.