Book opens with a detailed chronology of the life of Abigail Adams, the wife of the second president of the United States and the mother of the sixth president. Chapters chronicle the life and era of this spirited woman and include many excerpts from her own writings.

Examines the personality as well as the thought process which led this physicist to his discoveries which have helped shape our understanding of the natural world.

"The America that Alexander Hamilton knew was largely agricultural and built on slave labor. He envisioned something else: a multi-racial, urbanized, capitalistic America with a strong central government. He believed that such an America would be a land of opportunity for the poor and the newcomers. But Hamilton's vision put him at odds with his archrivals who envisioned a pastoral America of small towns, where governments were local, states would...

Alice Paul reignited the sleepy suffrage moment with dramatic demonstrations and provocative banners. After women won the vote in 1920, Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would make all the laws that discriminated against women unconstitutional. Paul saw another chance to advance women's rights when the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 began moving through Congress. Kops introduces readers to this relatively unknown leader of the...

"At thirteen, bright-eyed, straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible family secret: she was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn't learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job, but couldn't because she didn't have a Social Security number. Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn't keep her from being...

A biography of the slave who escaped to Boston in 1854, was arrested at the instigation of his owner, and whose trial caused a furor between abolitionists and those determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts.

"By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten black teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in Indiana shattered the myth of their inferiority. Their brilliant coach had fashioned an unbeatable team from a group of boys born in the South and raised in poverty. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down...

A biography of Babe Didrikson, who broke records in golf, track and field, and other sports, at a time when there were few opportunities for female athletes.

The author relates his experiences growing up in Harlem, the home of Sugar Ray Robinson and Langston Hughes, in the 1940s and 1950s.

I tell Grandmother that I am seven and a half years old; still go to the Jalazone Girls' School, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); and will soon complete the second grade. I am about to show her that I can write my name and many other words, but I stop when I remember that she has never gone to school and cannot read or write. As a child, Ibtisam Barakat wanted nothing more than to become a writer. This wasn't a common path...