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".

Discover the strange legends, tales and history of Wales. Did the Welsh sail across the Atlantic in the 12th century? Was King Arthur Welsh? Included, are stories on ghosts - both real and fake - and the legend of King Arthur. Welsh animal lore, customs, monsters, and music are also examined. One of the strangest villages in the world gets a chapter to itself, as do witches, miners, and druids. The book is written in a personal, lighthearted style, with geographical references to help identify the places.

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.

How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history. Using riveting...

Brought to you by Penguin. This powerful YA memoir-manifesto follows journalist and LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson as they explore their childhood, adolescence, and college years, growing up under the duality of being black and queer. From memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies...

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the 19th and 20th centuries, and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn in the volumes of A Young People’s History of the United States presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds listeners that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals.

The prosecution of Leo Frank was front-page news for two years, and Frank's lynching is still one of the most controversial incidents of the twentieth century. It marks a turning point in the history of racial and religious hatred in America, leading directly to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League and to the rebirth of the modern Ku Klux Klan. Relying on primary source documents and painstaking research, award-winning novelist Elaine Alphin tells the true story of justice undone in America.

You are about to learn more about the world you live in and your human life in it. We've compiled amazing facts that will blow your mind; from simple everyday life to things like history, health, worldwide events, and much more. So prepare to question everything you know about the world and to have your mind blown with these amazing facts about life and the world that everyone should know.

Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might all have been friends together. But this was Birchwood. As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death.

"Boys, let us get up a club." Six restless young men raided the linens at a friend's mansion, pulled pillowcases over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. The six friends named their club the Ku Klux Klan, and, all too quickly, their club grew into the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire with secret dens spread across the South. This is the story of how a secret terrorist group took root in America's democracy.

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.

This book invites curious minds of all ages into a world filled with real-life adventures, unsolved mysteries, and eye-opening stories about lost treasures. Whether you’re a history buff, a trivia lover, or a parent looking to spark your child’s imagination, this captivating collection is a portal to countless mysteries.

Adapted for young adults from the New York Times bestseller, a riveting and true WWII story of a young man--an American tank gunner--who meets his destiny in an iconic armor duel and forges an enduring bond with his enemy. Shut the hatches. It's time to roll out. You'll find yourself behind...

Brought to you by Penguin. An extraordinary coming-of-age story, adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to re-emerge on corners and prison...

Roma Victrix. The Republic of Rome is on a relentless march to create an empire - an empire built on the backs of the conquered, brought back to Rome as slaves. Attia was once destined to rule as the queen and swordmaiden of Thrace, the greatest warrior kingdom the world had seen since Sparta. Now she is a slave, given to Xanthus, the Champion of Rome, as a sign of his master’s favor.

"Unraveling Enigmas" beckons you to unlock the secrets that have mystified humanity for ages. Prepare to be captivated, intrigued, and utterly fascinated as you delve into this extraordinary compendium of the unexplained. With 101 unsolved mysteries at your disposal, prepare to spend countless hours engrossed in the enigmatic and the unknown. Embark on an adventure through time and across continents as you uncover ancient secrets, decode cryptic clues, and unravel the intricate webs of history’s most perplexing enigmas.

Young Robin Longbow, subapprentice forester in the King's Forest of Nottingham, must contend with the dislike of the Chief Forester, who bullies Robin in memory of his popular father. But Robin does not want to leave Nottingham or lose the title to his father's small tenancy, because he is in love with a young lady named Marian - and keeps remembering that his mother too was gentry and married a common forester. Robin has been granted a rare holiday to go to the Nottingham Fair, where he will spend the day with his friends Much and Marian.

Anna and the Swallow Man is a stunning, literary and wholly original debut novel that tells a new WWII story. Kraków, 1939, is no place to grow up. There are a million marching soldiers and a thousand barking dogs. And Anna Lania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father and suddenly, she’s alone. Then she meets the Swallow Man. He is a mystery, strange and tall. And, like Anna's missing father, he has a gift for languages: Polish, Russian, German, Yiddish, even Bird.

From award-winning journalist and children’s book author Mary Cronk Farrell comes the inspiring and fascinating story of the woman who gave a human face to the Vietnam War. Close-Up on War tells the story of French-born Catherine Leroy, one of the war’s few woman photographers, who documented some of the fiercest fighting in the 20-year conflict. Although she had no formal photographic training and had never before traveled more than a few hundred miles from Paris, Leroy left home at age 21 to travel to Vietnam and document the faces of war.

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...