Historical Nonfiction

While we can all recall Martin Luther King Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin. This was far from Rustin's first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling pacifist, he brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the forefront of US civil rights demonstrations, helped build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the fight for economic justice, and played a deeply influential role in the life of Dr. King.

Jim was a South African railway inspector in the late 1800s who lost his legs in an accident while at work. Unable to perform all his tasks with his disability but desperate to keep his job, Jim discovered a brilliant solution, a baboon named Jack. Jim trained Jack to help him both at home and at the depot.

Explore the lives and achievements of the Wright Brothers.

Zen, haiku, martial arts, sushi, anime, manga, film, video games . . . Japanese culture has long enriched our Western way of life. Yet from a Western perspective, Japan remains a remote island country that has long had a complicated relationship with the outside world. Japan—an archipelago strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland—is considerably farther from Asia than Britain is from Europe. The sea has provided an effective barrier against invasion and enabled the culture to develop in unique ways.

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.

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) a decade-long wave of sea-robbery plagued the Atlantic rim—often glamorized as the "Golden Age of Piracy". Boston-based laborer, Edward Low, left his mark on pirate history as the most vicious and sadistic raider of them all.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. The Nazis terribly persecuted Jews and other groups of people. They murdered millions of Jews across Europe during World War II. A preteen girl named Anne Frank and her family managed to hide from the Nazis for two years. During this time, Anne wrote about her experiences almost every day in her diary. Discover the courage of Anne and her family during one of the most horrific times in history.

Ten thousand Allied troops landed in the Netherlands in September 1944. This was the largest airborne invasion ever undertaken and it ended in utter disaster. Eight thousand men were killed, wounded, or captured during the Battle of Arnhem. Yet, what of those who escaped? And how did they manage it when surrounded by German troops? Leo Heaps' remarkable book, The Grey Goose of Arnhem, charts the activities of 250 men who, with the aid of Dutch Resistance, made it back across the Rhine to Allied lines.

Intensive care units and mechanical ventilation are the crucial foundation of modern medical care: without them, the appalling death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic would be even higher. In The Autumn Ghost, Dr. Hannah Wunsch traces the origins of these two innovations back to a polio epidemic in the autumn of 1952. Drawing together testimony from doctors, nurses, medical students, and patients, Wunsch relates a gripping tale of an epidemic that changed the world.

In this revealing insight into a little-known aspect of British wartime history, Helen Fry documents the stories of those who fought for king and adopted country. Based on interviews with veterans and drawing on a rich vein of source material, the author sets their personal stories against the bigger picture of the experience of enemy aliens in Britain during the Second World War.

Eva and her identical twin sister, Miriam, had a mostly happy childhood. Theirs was the only Jewish family in their small village in the Transylvanian mountains, but they didn't think much of it until anti-Semitism reared its ugly head in their school. Then, in 1944, ten-year-old Eva and her family were deported to Auschwitz. At its gates, Eva and Miriam were separated from their parents and other siblings, selected as subjects for Dr. Mengele's infamous medical experiments.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history, including Pablo Casals, the Catalan cello player; Louis Armstrong, the American trumpet player and singer; Frank Sinatra, the Italian American singer and actor; Édith Piaf, France's famous singing star; Maria Callas, the Greek opera singer; and Elvis Presley, the man who changed pop music.

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor.

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.

The Last Sovereigns is the story of how Sioux chief Sitting Bull resisted the White man's ways as a last best hope for the survival of an indigenous way of life on the Great Plains - a nomadic life based on buffalo and indigenous plants scattered across the Sioux's historical territories that were sacred to him and his people.

On Christmas morning in the year 800, Pope Leo III placed the crown of imperial Rome on the brow of a Germanic king named Karl - a gesture that enabled the man later hailed as Charlemagne to claim his empire and forever shape the destiny of Europe. Becoming Charlemagne tells the story of the international power struggle that led to this world-changing event, illuminating an era that has long been overshadowed by myth.

By the mid-fourteenth century, the world empire founded by Genghis Khan was in crisis. The Mongol Ilkhanate had ended in Iran and Iraq, China's Mongol rulers were threatened by the native Ming, and the Golden Horde and the Central Asian Mongols were prey to internal discord. Into this void moved the warlord Tamerlane, the last major conqueror to emerge from Inner Asia.

No one thought Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass would ever become friends. The former slave and the outspoken woman came from two different worlds. But they shared deep-seated beliefs in equality and the need to fight for it. Despite naysayers, hecklers, and even arsonists, Susan and Frederick became fast friends and worked together to change America.

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus's cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting "Death to Judas!" In this book, Maurice Samuels gives listeners new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus's early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil's Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.