"From America's favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country. In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn't make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history's...

Chronicles the frienship of Pink, a fifteen-year-old African-American Union soldier, and Say, his poor white comrade, as one nurses the other back to health from a battle wound and the two of them are imprisoned at Andersonville. Based on a true story.

"Songs of America explores the music of important times in our history--the stirring pro- and anti-war music of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War; the folk songs and popular music of the Great Depression, the fight for women's rights, and the Civil Rights movement; and the music of both beloved and lesser-known poets, musicians, and songwriters from Colonial times to the twenty-first century. Pulitzer Prize-winning...

The first full-scale biography of the "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the fire of the sun for his country in time of war. After Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation--an icon of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress. He created a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen...

"Kids love trains! Especially the old-timey steam engines found in amusement parks and zoos. But what about a super-speeder in Japan that zooms on the track at 361 miles per hour? Or the world's longest freight train, stretching on for a whopping 4.6 miles? Or futuristic railways in the sky? In this Level 1 reader, young readers will discover a whole new way of looking at trains!"--Amazon.com.

This episode of Year by Year covers the U.S. and the Soviet Union race to put the first man in space, while the Berlin wall is constructed, dividing East and West Germany.

A concise history of the national anthem, with the lyrics of the "Star Spangled Banner," music for piano and guitar chords, and a reproduction of Key's original manuscript.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson...

 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.
Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America — it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every...

"...explores the science and grisly history of U.S. Civil War medicine, using actual medical cases and first-person accounts by soldiers, doctors, and nurses."-- Publisher's description.