North America History

Meet unforgettable people and animals in the What a Character! Notable Lives from History series as you enjoy 10 real stories within each book! Designed to be fun and engaging for students or anyone with a love for history, these stories include a fascinating focus on important, influential, and visionary people, along with heroic animal escapades! From scientists to famous women to war heroes and more, there is something of interest for everyone in this exciting series!

In the late 1800s, newsboys—or “newsies”—were a critical part of the newspaper industry. They bought stacks of papers from newspaper publishers and then sold them on city streets for a small profit. But in 1898, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World raised the cost of 100 papers by 10 cents. The price increase cut into the newsboys’ profits, and by the summer of 1899 their frustration boiled over. They banded together and showed the world how activists of any age can use a strike.

Everybody has secrets, and former US presidents are no exception. Discover which stories about America’s past leaders are true and which ones are just tall tales.

Before he grew up and became one of Washington's most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff, with the photos hung on his bedroom wall to prove it. Decades later, Ferguson's latent buffdom is reignited. In Land of Lincoln, he embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to opportunism and all manner of reaction in between.

Have you ever wondered what country had the first truly global empire? Then pay attention... Folks used to say that the “Sun never sets on the British Empire” as a means of declaring Britain’s greatness. But it was the Portuguese who forged the first truly global empire. The major dominions of the Portuguese wrapped around the globe in a straight line, from Brazil to Angola, from Mozambique to India, and all the way to Macau. With its dominion under multiple time zones, the Sun, in fact, never did set on the Portuguese Empire.

Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm traveled from 1748 to 1750 through the colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Quebec. As one of the students of Carl Linnaeus, inventor of the binomial nomenclature system, Kalm spent considerable time with the members of an international network of natural philosophers including Peter Collinson in London, Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram in Philadelphia, and the Jesuits in Quebec. Kalm identified plant life, and recorded how the colonists changed the landscape. He speculated on the geological forces that created the Hudson River Valley, may have ...

The American Revolution was a war that allowed the birth of a new country. Secrets of the American Revolution reveals little-known stories of the people, weapons, and battles that have affected the maps on our walls and the allegiances in our hearts.

In 1777, the American Revolution is well underway. At 16, Sybil Ludington knows the war all too well. Her father is a colonel in the Continental Army, battling for America's independence from Great Britain. Colonel Ludington and his regiment are home for the season when word comes that the British Army is attacking nearby. With her father too ill to ride, it's up to young Sybil to alert the American militia that the British are coming.

In May 1607, English settlers stepped off their ship in North America. They were about to start the first permanent English settlement in North America. They endured many hardships and made many tough choices in the new land. Now the choices are yours. Would you rather suffer from intestinal problems after becoming infected with dysentery or have bleeding gums after getting scurvy? Would you want to work as a blacksmith or tend the tobacco fields?

Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 Americans have viewed school integration as a central tenet of the Black civil rights movement. Yet, school integration was not the only - or even always the dominant - civil rights strategy. At times, African Americans also fought for separate, Black-controlled schools dedicated to racial uplift and community empowerment.

So many lives were lost in the Battle of the Alamo. Are the spirits of these brave fighters now haunting modern-day San Antonio, Texas? What other ghosts could be joining them? Discover the ghosts and haunted places of this historic Texas town. Listeners will find just the right amount of scariness for a cold, dark night.

Nat Turner, an enslaved black man, believed he was chosen by God to battle against the evils of slavery. Driven by visions, Turner banded with six others, and on August 22, 1831, his rebellion began with attacks at plantations in Southampton, Virginia. As he and his group moved from plantation to plantation, dozens of enslaved men joined them. Finally, the local militia put an end to their movement, arresting and hanging many of the men involved.

The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It’s 1811, and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior Chief Tecumseh’s alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades.

This groundbreaking audiobook offers a new analysis of the British Army during the "American rebellion" at both operational and tactical levels. Presenting fresh insights into the speed of British tactical movements, Spring discloses how the system for training the army prior to 1775 was overhauled and adapted to the peculiar conditions confronting it in North America.

There is a saying: knowledge is power. The secret is this. Knowledge, applied at the right time and place, is more than power. It’s magic. That’s what the Black Panther Party did. They called up this magic and launched a revolution. In the beginning, it was a story like any other. It could have been yours and it could have been mine. But once it got going, it became more than any one person could have imagined.

In the summer of 1754, deep in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a very young George Washington suffered his first military defeat, and a centuries-old feud between Great Britain and France was rekindled. The war that followed would be fought across virgin territories, from Nova Scotia to the forks of the Ohio River, and it would ultimately decide the fate of the entire North American continent—not just for Great Britain and France but also for the Spanish and Native American populations.

Three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Three photographers set out to document life at Manzanar, an incarceration camp in the California desert: Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams. Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki weave together these photographers' images, firsthand accounts, and stunning original art to examine the history, heartbreak, and injustice of the Japanese American incarceration.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is a world-renowned scholar, professor of history and geography at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History of Oxford University. The Americas, part of the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles series, offers an intriguing history of the world's western hemisphere.

Did you know the Olmecs might have been the first people to introduce writing? The first people who managed to elevate themselves to civilized life were the Olmecs. But they remain relatively unknown. In this new captivating history audiobook, you will discover the truth about the earliest known civilization in America.

On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell, and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis - and as perilous. The 10 men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, down the Colorado in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona.