biography

Vlad III, the 15th century ruler of what is now southern Romania, had a terrifying nickname, the Impaler. It originated with the grisly way he dealt with his enemies: He demanded that their not-yet-dead bodies be impaled on stakes. Vlad’s reputation for brutality only grew and later became entwined with the legend of the vampire Dracula. This in-depth account presents the true story of Vlad the Impaler and his fight against the Ottoman Empire, a struggle that makes the villain a hero to some. An appealing design and features such as sidebars and fact boxes make this biography an especially high-interest read for young historians.

A portrait of the outbreak of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told through eyewitness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold. Petrograd (the former St. Petersburg), was filled with foreign visitors who existed in hotels, clubs, offices, and embassies, and were acutely aware of the chaos in the city, the terrible shortage of edible food, and the fact that their lives were constantly in danger. The group included journalists, diplomats, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses, expatriate socialites, and some African Americans. Many kept diaries and wrote letters home. Much of the material in this book is previously unpublished and furnishes a unique and frightening picture of life in Petrograd during the revolution.

The author's memoir of how she survived a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons and how she fought to keep her brother and three sisters together.

At the height of the California Gold Rush in 1849, a wagon train of men, women, children and their animals stumbled into a one hundred-and-thirty-mile-long valley in the Mojhave Desert. Barren and hostile, with a dry and unearthly surface of white salts, they became hopelessly lost. After killing the oxen for food, they prepared to die until a twenty-nine-year-old hero, William Lewis Manly, volunteered to cross the desert and attempt to get help. Forty-five years later, Manly told his tale in a book first published in 1894. At his death in Los Angeles in 1903, he had been a miner, rancher, merchant, farmer, pioneer and adventurer and had helped to open the American West.

The author recalls her experiences in a Nazi Jewish ghetto in Rohatyn, Poland with her mother and sister in 1941. As they waited to see what their fate would be, she was able to escape with a false birth certificate because she did not look Jewish. Her mother and sister remained behind, and ultimately perished. She found work in a hospital in Germany under her assumed identity and managed to elude Nazi capture. After the war, she immigrated to the United States with her husband.

Andrew Harding, a BBC foreign correspondent, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud 'Tarzan' Nur--an impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north London. In 2010 Tarzan returned, as mayor of Mogadishu, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. Tarzan became a galvanizing symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue today to threaten the country's revival.

Text and illustrations explore the life and career of Anders Celsius, a Swedish scientist best known for the Celsius temperature scale.

"One journalist's memoir of her personal friendship with Harper Lee and her sister, drawing on the ... access they gave her to share the story of their lives"--Provided by publisher.

Chronicles the life of twentieth-century writer-anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God.".