Children of the Days

Children of the Days
Author: Eduardo Galeano
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1568589719

Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that date of the calendar year, resurrecting the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map, but whose lives remind us of our darkest hours and sweetest victories. Challenging readers to consider the human condition and our own choices, Galeano elevates the little-known heroes of our world and decries the destruction of the intellectual, linguistic, and emotional treasures that we have all but forgotten. Readers will discover many inspiring narratives in this collection of vignettes: the Brazilians who held a "smooch-in" to protest against a dictatorship for banning kisses that "undermined public morals;" the astonishing day Mexico invaded the United States; and the "sacrilegious" women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in the Galician city of A Coruna in 1901. Galeano also highlights individuals such as Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil, who was eaten by Caete Indians off the coast of Alagoas, as well as Abdul Kassem Ismael, the grand vizier of Persia, who kept books safe from war by creating a walking library of 117,000 tomes aboard four hundred camels, forming a mile-long caravan. Beautifully translated by Galeano's longtime collaborator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a majestic humanist treasure that shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.

A Child's Calendar

A Child's Calendar
Author: John Updike
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1430129883

"...This read-along is a richly sensory experience.... sound effects of chirping birds, tromping feet, lowing cows, whirring insects, exploding fireworks, pounding surf, buzzing bees, barking dogs, honking geese, and tolling bells create their own aural metaphors that echo the poet's verse and clearly reflect the seasons." -Booklist

A Short History of the Twentieth Century

A Short History of the Twentieth Century
Author: Geoffrey Blainey
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2007-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1742282830

This new book from celebrated historian Geoffrey Blainey takes us on an incredible global journey through a tempestuous hundred years. His eye for detail and evocative style bring to vivid life many of the events that marked the 20th century: two world wars, the rise and fall of communist states, the worst economic slump in the world's history, the decline of European monarchies and empires, the ascent of the first female prime ministers, the resurgence of Asia, and the exploration of outer space. Yet it is not only through such grand markers that we come to know and understand our history. As ever, Blainey brings the past alive by recording the minutiae of daily life – nine-year-old mothers with puny babies, the whiff of chaff and manure, the bustle of crowded cities. It brilliantly evokes the excitement of the times, the triumphs and the tragedies of perhaps the most significant century of all.

Pivotal Tuesdays

Pivotal Tuesdays
Author: Margaret O'Mara
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812247469

From the era of the industrial factory to the age of the microchip, Pivotal Tuesdays explores four twentieth-century elections—1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992—using the election of the American president as a lens through which to explore the broader sweep of the nation's social, economic, and political history.