Historical Nonfiction

The fifth book in the Making of America series examines the life of America’s 32nd president: his birth into one of America’s elite families, his domineering mother, his marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt, his struggle with polio, and his political career. A Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) won a record four presidential elections and is the longest-serving US president. During his time in office, he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II. He helped to redefine the role of the US government with the New Deal.

This biography is an excellent and accessible introduction for youngsters to learn about one of the world's most influential luminaries. Helen Keller's poignant narrative is beautifully captured in this unforgettable portrait of a woman whose vision for innovation and progress changed America and the world forever.

The University of California, Berkeley—widely known as "Cal"—is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university's roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley's history.

In Why the Nineties Matter, Terry Anderson provides a broad-ranging history of America in that decade. Not simply a chronological account, the book focuses on key trends that either began or gained steam then and which have had lasting effects until this day. Threading together politics, economic transformations, and sociocultural trends, he focuses on what mattered most in retrospect.

Themes of unspoiled paradise tamed by progress can be seen in stories about pioneer history across the US, especially in Florida. Selling Vero Beach explores how settlers from northern states created myths about the Indian River area on Florida's Atlantic Coast, importing ideas about the region's Indigenous peoples and marketing the land as an idyllic, fertile place of possibilities.

A perfect tool for young listeners as they grow into the leaders of tomorrow, Veronica Chambers’s inspiring collection of profiles—along with Senator Cory Booker’s stirring foreword—will inspire listeners of all ages to stand up for what’s right.

In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln's lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln's close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union.

Frieda "Fritizie" Mann had several identities during her brief life, and the mysterious circumstances of her death raise as many questions as they do answers. She was born in 1903 near the present border between Poland and Ukraine. And in the last year of her life, Mann became locally famous. She had reinvented herself as a flapper and "Oriental" dancer. She claimed to have friends in Hollywood and a movie contract. On the night of her murder, she said she was going to a party to meet her Hollywood friends; instead she traveled to an isolated roadside hotel where she met her death.

In the early 1960s, Ann Garretson sparks an airmail romance with Lieutenant Jack Sigg, a West Point grad and tank commander on the German-Czech border. Ann and Jack's correspondence heats up, and they hatch a rendezvous in Europe for the summer of 1964 to seal their budding love. A match for the ages. Not so fast. Ann's best friend in college, Terry Marshall, helps her plan the escapade, but in the weeks leading up to her trip, they realize they are more than just friends.

Follow the life of Luz, a Mexican-American war hero who fought for equality and created the oldest Latino civil rights organization in the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt largely is known today by stereotypes and his many accomplishments—but the full and fascinating essence of the man is fading. In this book, TR charges back! Historian Rick Marschall has collected almost five hundred quotations, descriptions, impressions, and memories of the "Most Interesting American" derived from vintage newspapers, magazines, scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and so much more. In chapters devoted to his personality as a family man, a conservationist, an intellectual, patriot, activist, and as an American TR comes alive as never before seen.

This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide nonrecognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk, tea, or enslaved human beings. The Gambling Century focuses like no previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it.

Discover the prodigious global influence of il bel paese in this star-studded retelling of Italy's past-from a foremost author of historic Italy. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced book.

An acclaimed biographer for children, Tanya Lee Stone has received many accolades for her over 80 published books. This Junior Library Guild Premier Selection introduces young listeners to women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In the 19th century, American women weren't allowed to own property, go to college, or even vote. Unwilling to suffer this injustice, Stanton gathered like-minded people to change these rules.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history. Contents: Henry J Heinz, the man who invented tomato ketchup; William Lever, who made millions from soap; Michael Marks, founder of the Marks and Spencer stores; Henry Ford, who mass produced cars and made them affordable; Coco Chanel, the businesswoman who changed fashion for women; Ray Kroc, the man who created the McDonald's chain of restaurants.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of European empire. David Graeber explores how the proto-democratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata—an ethnic group made up of mixed descendants of pirates who settled on Madagascar at the beginning of the eighteenth century—came to shape the Enlightenment project.

A French prisoner struggles to survive in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. A delinquent youth is obsessed with a cemetery ghost. Good and evil fight over the soul of a zombie. A grandma thought to suffer from mental illness predicts the future. Car trouble leads to an encounter with an angel. A chief must calm a volcano before it destroys his village. A human tries to dissuade elves and dwarves from going to war. A bride confronts deception in an effort to reunite with her bridegroom. A boy encounters superhuman army ants that escape from a military laboratory and move into ...

On April 15th, 1783, the Articles of Peace between the United States and Great Britain went into effect proclaiming that "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the United States . . . to be free Sovereign and independent States." That recognition represented a monumental achievement for the new American nation. It also, as Samuel Flagg Bemis shows us, marked the end of a world war.

There was a time when few knew what dinosaurs looked like. This is the story of how Waterhouse Hawkins built the first life-sized dinosaur models and stunned the world with his awe-inspiring creations.