Social Studies

MISSISSIPPI. 1966. On a hot June afternoon, a black man set out to walk across his home state of Mississippi. He walked to confront racial fears, discrimination, and hate. He walked to make a statement. But two days into his journey, James Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside attack. Leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, rushed to take up his cause. What started as one man's mission became the March Against Fear.

"They came from around the world to live the American dream. Instead, they walked into the worst nightmare--the Civil War.

Catherine Burkhart, a 16-year-old immigrant from Germany. Mary Ryan, age 18, from Ireland. Kate Horan, a 25-year-old mother of four small children. They, along with hundreds of other poor girls and women, found work in the arsenals making small-arms cartridges. They toiled up to 72 hours a week making sure that the armies of the North and South never ran out of bullets.

In this enthralling book, Newbery Medalist Russell Freeman provides a succinct account of perhaps the most puzzling and controversial of America's wars. Describing how a superpower caught up in 1950s cold war politics became increasingly enmeshed in a conflict over 8,000 miles away, he then explains why twenty years later and exit was so difficult. In words and photographs, he chronicles the unfolding events in Vietnam and at home as increasing numbers of young men were sent into the jungles to fight.