Collection: History

ThisCaldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King Honor, and New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children's Book picture book biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., brings his life and the profound nature of his message to young children through his own words.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the most influential and gifted speakers of all time. Doreen Rappaport uses quotes from some of his most beloved speeches to tell the story of his life and his work in a simple, direct way. Bryan Collier's stunning collage art combines remarkable watercolor paintings with vibrant patterns and textures. A timeline and a list of additional books and websites help make this a standout biography of Dr. King.

A teenage boy risks his life to tell the truth in this gripping graphic memoir by youth activist Muhammad Najem and CNN producer Nora Neus.

"A story of journalism at its most inspiring, its most heartbreaking, its most essential. Muhammad is a reporter who brings hope to a damaged world."
--John Berman, CNN anchor

"A powerful true story that demonstrates the power of one young person determined to change the world. Everyone should read this phenomenal book." --Victoria Jamieson, coauthor of When Stars Are Scattered

"What an amazing story this is! One family's struggle for survival in the chaos of Syria, and one boy's courageous decision to risk his life to tell the story. This graphic memoir is inspiring and exciting, powerful and very poignant. I loved it!" --Anderson Cooper

Muhammad Najem was only eight years old when the war in Syria began. He was thirteen when his beloved Baba, his father, was killed in a bombing while praying. By fifteen, Muhammad didn't want to hide anymore--he wanted to act. He was determined to reveal what families like his were enduring in Syria: bombings by their own government and days hiding in dark underground shelters.

Armed with the camera on his phone and the support of his family, he started reporting on the war using social media. He interviewed other kids like him to show what they hope for and dream about. More than anything, he did it to show that Syrian kids like his toddler brother and infant sister, are just like kids in any other country. Despite unimaginable loss, Muhammad was always determined to document the humanity of the Syrian people. Eventually, the world took notice.

This tenderly illustrated graphic memoir is told by Muhammad himself along with CNN producer Nora Neus, who helped break Muhammad's story and bring his family's plight to an international audience.

"Our Enemies Will Vanish achieves the highest level of war reporting: a tough, detailed account that nevertheless reads like a great novel. One is reminded of Michael Herr's Dispatches . . . Frankly, it's what we have all aspired to. I did not really understand Ukraine until I read Trofimov's account." --Sebastian Junger

A revelatory eyewitness account of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and heroism of the Ukrainian people in their resistance by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Ukrainian chief foreign-affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war's decisive moments--from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut--to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world's great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. But in the face of this existential threat, the Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to seesaw to this day. This is the story of the epic bravery of the Ukrainian people--people Trofimov knows very well.

For Trofimov, this war is deeply personal. He grew up in Kyiv and his family has lived there for generations. With deep empathy and local understanding, Trofimov tells the story of how everyday Ukrainian citizens--doctors, computer programmers, businesspeople, and schoolteachers--risked their lives and lost loved ones. He blends their brave and tragic stories with expert military analysis, providing unique insight into the thinking of Ukrainian leadership and mapping out the decisive stages of what has become a perilous war for Ukraine, the Putin regime, and indeed, the world.

This brutal, catastrophic struggle is unfolding on another continent, but the United States and its NATO allies have become deeply implicated. As the war drags on, it threatens to engulf the world. We cannot look away. At once heart-breaking and inspiring, Our Enemies Will Vanish is a riveting, vivid, and first-hand account of the Ukrainian refusal to surrender. It is the story of ordinary people fighting not just for their homes and their families but for justice and democracy itself.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait--the bestselling author of River of the Gods brings us the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

"A rich, dramatic tale that ranges from the personal to the literally earth-shaking." --The New York Times

The River of Doubt--it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil's most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.

From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt's life, here is Candice Millard's dazzling debut.

Look for Candice Millard's latest book, River of the Gods.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The heart-wrenching, uplifting tale about a woman named Cupcake

"[Cupcake] Brown's confessional . . . memoir is one you can't easily put down. Her life is nothing short of a miracle."--Chicago Sun-Times

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, and homelessness.

Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she'd even turned twenty.

And that's when things got interesting. . .

Orphaned by the death of her mother and left in the hands of a sadistic foster parent, young Cupcake Brown learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs.

A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you'll ever read. Moving in its frankness, this is the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you'll ever take.

Praise for A Piece of Cake

"[Brown] reflects now with insight and honesty on her experiences. . . . An engaging account . . . of a remarkable life filled with pain and wisdom, hope and redemption."--San Fracisco Chronicle

"Dazzles you with the amazing change that is possible in one lifetime."--Washington Post

"A teacher is never a giver of truth--he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst."--Bruce Lee

Within the pages of Striking Thoughts, you will find the secrets of Bruce Lee's incredible success-- as an actor, martial artist, and inspiration to the world. Consisting of eight sections, Striking Thoughts covers 72 topics and 825 aphorisms--from spirituality to personal liberation and from family life to filmmaking--all of which Bruce lived by.

His ideas helped energize his life and career and made it possible for him to live a happy and assured life, overcoming challenging obstacles with seeming ease. They also inspired his family, friends, students, and colleagues to achieve success in their own lives and this personal collection will help you in your journey too.

Sections include:

• On First Principles--including life, existence, time, and death
• On Being Human--including the mind, happiness, fear, and dreams
• On Matters of Existence--health, love, marriage, raising children, ethics, racism, and adversity
• On Achievement--work, goals, faith, success, money, and fame
• On Art and Artists--art, filmmaking, and acting
• On Personal Liberation--conditioning, Zen Buddhism, meditation, and freedom
• On the Process of Becoming--self-actualization, self-help, self-expression, and growth
• On Ultimate (Final) Principles--Yin-yang, totality, Tao, and the truth

This Bruce Lee Book is part of the Bruce Lee Library which also features:

• Bruce Lee: The Celebrated Life of the Golden Dragon
Bruce Lee: The Tao of Gung Fu
• Bruce Lee: Artist of Life
• Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon
• Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body
• Bruce Lee: Jeet Kune Do

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year

"An instant sports classic." --New York Post * "Stellar." --The Wall Street Journal * "A true masterwork...880 pages of sheer baseball bliss." --BookPage (starred review) * "This is a remarkable achievement." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will.

Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious, The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book's introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, "Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?"

Baseball's legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game's all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn't rely just on records and statistics--he lovingly retraces players' origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball's past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth's? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history?

No compendium of baseball's legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O'Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more.

The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.

2020 Green Earth Book Award Long list 2020 Crystal Kite Awards - Southeast Division Winner 2020-2021 Keystone to Reading Elementary Book Award List Notable Social Studies Trade Books list - Winning Title! 2019 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award - Winning Title Florida Book Award Gold Winner Recipient of the 2019 Eureka! Honors Award Winner -Best of 2019 Kids Books - Most Inspiring Category As a boy, Jadav Payeng was distressed by the destruction deforestation and erosion was causing on his island home in India's Brahmaputra River. So he began planting trees. What began as a small thicket of bamboo, grew over the years into 1,300 acre forest filled with native plants and animals. The Boy Who Grew a Forest tells the inspiring true story of Payeng--and reminds us all of the difference a single person with a big idea can make.

"The most important book to read about the AI boom" (Wired): The "gripping" (New Yorker) true story of the first time machines came for human jobs--and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today

Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Wired, and the Financial Times - A Next Big Idea Book Club "Must-Read" The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.

The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?

The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world--and is shaping our future.

- A New Republic Best Book of the Year - The Globalist Top Books of the Year - Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction

Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven "nations" that continue to shape North America

According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

"A delightful global tour of how humans think and play, led by one of our finest mathematical storytellers." -- Ben Orlin, author of Math Games with Bad Drawings

Where should you move first in Connect 4? What is the best property in Monopoly? And how can pi help you win rock paper scissors?

Spanning millennia, oceans and continents, countries and cultures, Around the World in Eighty Games gleefully explores how mathematics and games have always been deeply intertwined. Renowned mathematician Marcus du Sautoy investigates how games provided the first opportunities for deep mathematical insight into the world, how understanding math can help us play games better, and how both math and games are integral to human psychology and culture.

For as long as there have been people, there have been games, and for nearly as long, we have been exploring and discovering mathematics. A grand adventure, Around the World in Eighty Games teaches us not just how games are won, but how they, and their math, shape who we are.

In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeletons in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.

Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition.

Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast--one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn--nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. - Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information--what Ed Conway calls "the ethereal world"--our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.

In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth--traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.

Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.

"Impeccably researched...captivating!" --Elin Hilderbrand * "A well-paced history." --The New York Times Book Review * "Fascinating...with new details and well-sourced reporting." --Associated Press

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The intimate, multigenerational story of the Kennedy family as seen through their Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod--the iconic place where they've celebrated, mourned, and bonded--based on more than a hundred in-depth interviews by a Rolling Stone editor and journalist Kate Storey.

Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, is synonymous with the Kennedy family. It is where, for a hundred years, America's most storied political family has come to celebrate, bond, play, and grieve. It is also the setting of so many events we remember: JFK giving his presidential acceptance speech, Jackie speaking with a Life magazine reporter just days after her husband's assassination, Senator Edward Kennedy seeking refuge after the Chappaquiddick crash, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger tying the knot--and even Conor Kennedy courting pop star Taylor Swift. Anyone who has lived in, worked at, or visited the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port has had a front-row view to history. Now, with extraordinary access to the Kennedy family--and featuring more than fifty rarely-seen images--journalist Kate Storey gives us a remarkably intimate and poignant look at the rhythms of an American dynasty.

Drawing from a wealth of conversations with family members, friends, neighbors, household and security staff, Storey delivers a rich and textured account of the Kennedys' lives in their summer refuge. From the 1920s, when Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy rented then bought a home known as The Malcolm Cottage, to today, when many Kennedys have purchased their own homes surrounding what's now called The Big House, this book delivers many surprising revelations across the decades, including what matriarch Rose considered the family's greatest tragedy, the rivalrous relationship between brothers Jack and Joe, details about Jackie's life at the compound, and previously unknown glimpses into JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's loving and ill-fated relationship.

"Engaging and...intimate anecdotes that often stand in contrast to predominant, media-created perceptions...Readers will come away with new insights and due appreciation for this uniquely American dynasty" (Booklist, starred review).

Packed with striking photography, Eyewitness World War I explores one of the most brutal conflicts of the 20th century.

Become an eyewitness to the first conflict fought on a global scale in this picture-led reference guide that will take you on a visual tour of World War One. Made in collaboration with The Imperial War Museum, children will be mesmerized by learning about the world-changing events that led to the start of the conflict.

This beautifully illustrated guide for kids aged 9+ gives an insight into life in the muddy trenches and what it was like to be a soldier, along with a broader picture of the events that took place causing the war to start. Using striking full-color photographs and illustrations of warfare, weaponry, vehicles, maps, and secret documents, this is an eyewitness view of the conflict dubbed the "the war to end all wars".

Throughout the pages of this newly-revised book on the First World War, you can expect to find:

- A fresh new look; new photographs, updated information, and a new "eyewitness" feature.
- Amazing facts, updated diagrams, statistics, and timelines.
- Brand new eyewitness accounts from experts in the field.

Eyewitness World War I introduces the ultimate guide to the first global conflict, with more than 250 photographs illustrating the people, places and stories of the war. Children can learn all about military vehicles and tank warfare, the first ever gas attacks used during a war and Armistice and peace after four years of fighting. This all-encompassing guide to World War One is a must-have for curious children aged 9+ with a thirst for learning, as well as teachers, parents and librarians.

So, what's new?

Part of DK's best-selling Eyewitness series, this popular title has been reinvigorated for the next generation of information-seekers and stay-at-home explorers, with a fresh new look, up to 20 percent new images, including photography and updated diagrams, updated information, and a new "eyewitness" feature with fascinating first-hand accounts from experts in the field.

Explore the series!

Globally, the Eyewitness series has sold more than 50 million copies over 30 years. Travel through the solar system with Eyewitness Space, learn the incredible systems that keep your body functioning with Eyewitness Human Body, or take a trip aboard the most famous ship in history with Eyewitness Titanic.

This crucial, empowering, #1 New York Times bestselling exploration of racism--and antiracism--in America makes critical ideas accessible for teen readers, adapted from Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning.
This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.

Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives. Download the free educator guide here: https: //www.hachettebookgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Stamped-Educator-Guide.pdf
Now available for younger readers: Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You