American History Nonfiction

Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name and imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It's ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man's most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy.

50 women who shaped American history - how will they inspire you? Women have always been at the forefront of American history - and now it's time to hear their stories! This look into American history for kids is bursting with engaging biographies that explore the lives of these inspiring women from different backgrounds and a wide array of fields.

"Boys, let us get up a club." Six restless young men raided the linens at a friend's mansion, pulled pillowcases over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. The six friends named their club the Ku Klux Klan, and, all too quickly, their club grew into the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire with secret dens spread across the South. This is the story of how a secret terrorist group took root in America's democracy.

Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States, where he came to the attention of a prominent North Carolina family after filling "the walls of his room with piteous petitions to be released, all written in the Arabic language," as one local newspaper reported. Ibn Said soon became a local celebrity, and in 1831 he was asked to write his life story, producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic.

David Kherdian re-creates his mother's voice in telling the true story of a childhood interrupted by one of the most devastating holocausts of our century....Vernon Dumehjian Kherdian was born into a loving and prosperous family. Then, in the year 1915, the Turkish government began the systematic destruction of its Armenian population.

Reverend F. D. Reese’s favorite subject to teach his students was freedom. But in Selma, Alabama, unfair tests and police officers’ swinging billy clubs kept African Americans from voting. Reverend Reese knew something had to change, so he asked his fellow teachers to do something dangerous - something that might lead to beatings and prison time. He asked them to march.

Learn about the bomb blast that rocked the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, killing four young girls.

Named Temujin at birth by his nomadic family in early Mongolia, the great Genghis Khan used his skill and cunning to create the Mongol Empire and conquer almost the entire continent of Asia. As ruler of the largest empire in human history, he was as respected as he was feared. Learn more about the man and the legend in Who Was Genghis Khan?

At age two, Helen Keller became deaf and blind. She lived in a world of silence and darkness and she spent the rest of her life struggling to break through it. But with the help of teacher Annie Sullivan, Helen learned to read, write, and do many amazing things. This inspiring biography is perfect for young middle-grade listeners.

In early 1968 the grisly on-the-job deaths of two African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, prompted an extended strike by that city's segregated force of trash collectors. Workers sought union protection, higher wages, improved safety, and the integration of their work force. Their work stoppage became a part of the larger civil rights movement and drew an impressive array of national movement leaders to Memphis, including, on more than one occasion, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King added his voice to the struggle in what became the final speech of his life.

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.

Understanding the origins of civil wars and their trajectories therefore demands some appreciation of the economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic order of societies. If there is one factor that best predicts why a civil war erupts, it is a prior civil war. That is why knowledge of a country's history of political violence, and associated narratives about who is to blame and why, are critical to understanding where a civil war might next occur.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death - from an assassin's bullet - in 1968.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

Revised and updated with new information, this Jane Addams Award-winner is an in-depth examination of the Emmett Till murder case, a catalyst of the civil rights movement.

Featuring 18 trailblazing Black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations. Among these biographies, listeners will find heroes, role models, and everyday women who did extraordinary things - bold women whose actions and beliefs contributed to making the world better for generations of girls and women to come.

Meet extraordinary black heroes throughout history—biographies for kids ages 8 to 12. You’re invited to meet ancient Egyptian rulers, brilliant scientists, legendary musicians, and civil rights activists—all in the same book! Black Heroes introduces you to 51 black leaders and role models from both history and modern times. This black history book for kids features inspirational biographies of trailblazers from the United States, Egypt, Britain, and more.

In spring of 1918, World War I was underway, and troops at Fort Riley, Kansas, found themselves felled by influenza. By the summer of 1918, the second wave struck as a highly contagious and lethal epidemic and within weeks exploded into a pandemic, an illness that travels rapidly from one continent to another. It would impact the course of the war, and kill many millions more soldiers than warfare itself.

On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. This act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America. Leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period.

When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football", they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.