Book

There is a ship, a navy ship. It is called the USS New York. It is big like other navy ships, and it sails like other navy ships, but there is something special about the USS New York.

Following the events of September 11, 2001, a steel beam from the World Trade Center towers was given to the United States Navy.

The beam was driven from New York to a foundry in Louisiana.

Metal workers heated the beam to a high, high temperature.

Chippers and grinders, painters and polishers worked on the beam for months.

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.

On May 22, 2007, three veteran sailors set out on an epic voyage from Florida to France. But the trip of a lifetime soon turns into a nightmare when their forty-seven-foot sailboat disappears along the Gulf Stream in the throes of a calamitous storm. The three weary passengers are left behind and struggle to stay alive afloat a life raft in violent waves eighty feet tall.

"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.

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.

"During World War I, British and American ships were painted with bold colors and crazy patterns from bow to stern. Why would anyone put such eye-catching designs on ships?

Desperate to protect ships from German torpedo attacks, British lieutenant-commander Norman Wilkinson proposed what became known as dazzle. These stunning patterns and colors were meant to confuse the enemy about a ship's speed and direction. By the end of the war, more than four thousand ships had been painted with these mesmerizing designs.

Here is the story of Alexander Hamilton, America's first Secretary of the Treasury, the founding father who is on the ten-dollar bill - a brash and brilliant man who died in a duel and left a legacy that continues to this day.

Alexander Hamilton tells of his impoverished upbringing in the West Indies, journeying to New York City to attend college just before the Revolutionary War, writing in defiance of the king of England, acting as senior aide-de-camp to General George Washington, and helping to create a stable government for the new nation.

Today if you visit Amsterdam, you'll see bikes everywhere - they rule the road! But that wasn't always the case. Fifty years ago, Amsterdam was so crowded with vehicles that bicyclists could hardly move. But moms and kids relied on their bike to get from place to place in the city. What were they to do? Women like Maartje Rutten and her friends led protests against the unsafe streets, and one day a whole swarm of women and children took over the big new tunnel meant just for vehicles to show what a little pedal power could do.

The founding fathers argued about when to fight the English. They argued about how to fight the English. They tussled over taxes. They disagreed about foreign affairs. They fought each other in private. They fought each other in public. They used essays. They used whispers. One of them even used a pistol.

Some of the fights were settled in their own time. Some of them are still being fought in ours.

British explorer Percy Fawcett believed that hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest was an ancient city, lost for the ages. Most people didn’t even believe this city existed. But if Fawcett could find it, he would be rich and famous forever. This is the true story of one man’s thrilling, dangerous journey into the jungle, and what he found on his quest for the lost city of Z.

"Who will remember?"

A century ago, the curious idea that spirits not only survive death but can be contacted on the “other side” was widespread. Psychic mediums led countless séances, claiming to connect the grieving with their lost relations through everything from frenzied trance writing to sticky expulsions of ectoplasm.

The inspiring true story of Reckless, the brave little horse who became a Marine.

When a group of US Marines fighting in the Korean War found a bedraggled mare, they wondered if she could be trained to as a packhorse. They had no idea that the skinny, underfed horse had one of the biggest and bravest hearts they’d ever known. And one of the biggest appetites!

Back in the 1830s, who was a young blacksmith from Vermont, about to make his mark on American history? John Deere, that’s who!

Who moved to Illinois, where farmers were struggling to plow through the thick, rich soil they called gumbo? Who tinkered and tweaked and tested until he invented a steel plow that sliced into the prairie easy as you please?

Long before the first tractor, who changed farming forever? John Deere, that’s who!

Beautiful illustrations―including spectacular landscapes―reflect the time period and bring John Deere's remarkable story to life.

Mother-son team Jonah and Jeanette Winter bring to life one of the most secretive scientific projects in history—the creation of the atomic bomb—in this powerful and moving picture book.