This book explores the history of Israel, from the beginning of the Zionist movement to the birth of Israel as a state in 1948 to the intense conflicts over Israel, the Palestinians, and the Jewish settlements of today.
History
The Hollow Tree
Winner of the 1999 Canadian Governor General’s Award. It is 1777, and 15-year-old Phoebe Olcott is thrown headlong into the turmoil of war when her beloved cousin Gideon is hanged for being a British spy. When she finds a secret message from Gideon, containing the names of Loyalist families to be protected by the King’s soldiers, she decides to deliver it to the British general at Fort Ticonderoga. Thus begins an enthralling wilderness journey, where Phoebe is accompanied by a cat, a bear cub, and Jem Morrissay, a young Loyalist heading to British Canada himself. Award-winning author Janet Lunn has brought a little-known piece of our history to vivid life.
Diego: Bigger Than Life
Diego Rivera’s energy, physique, love for women, and work were all “bigger than life.” Born in a small Mexican mining town in 1886,he drew his way through childhood, entered art school at ageten, and later traveled throughout Europe, studying the great masters andimitating their techniques. When he returned to Mexico in 1921, he foundhis own unique style. He began painting the poetry of the common people –working, suffering, fighting, seeking joy, living, and dying — on thewalls of public buildings. His murals were passionate, controversial, political,and enormous — like the painter himself.
1968
1968, the year America grew up from racial and gender equality fights to the struggle against the draft and the Vietnam war. In 1968 Americans asked questions and fought for their rights. Now, 30 years later, we look back on that seminal year–from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assasination to the Columbia University riots to our changing role among other nations–in this gripping introduction to the events home and abroad. The year we first took steps in space, the year we shaped the present, 1968 presented by a former New York Times writer who lived through it all, shares the story with detail.
Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest
Chocolate milk, chocolate fudge, chocolate frosting on chocolate cake. Children love chocolate, and this book, filled with fun facts, introduces them to the flavor’s exotic story. It begins in the rainforests of South America with the bitter seeds of a strange tree. The Aztecs served their human sacrifices chocolate mixed with blood. Conquistadors sent chocolate home to Spain where, sweetened with sugar, it became the rage among aristocrats. But not until 1847 was the first solid chocolate candy made, and only in the past century has the sacred treasure of ancient kings become the popular treat of millions. Profusely illustrated and meticulously researched, Chocolate accompanies a major exhibition that travels from Chicago’s Field Museum to 10 other sites.
The Corps Of The Bare-Boned Plane
When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended. Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath’s new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.
Lady Daisy
Ned’s disappointment turns into shock when the doll his grandmother has given him speaks to him, and together the two of them share stories of their very different worlds.
Little Sister
Aided by magical creatures from Japanese myths, Mitsuko, a young girl in the imperial court of twelfth-century Japan, bravely ventures to the netherworld to search for her sister’s wandering spirit.
The Illusion of the Epoch
Written nearly fifty years ago, at a time when the world was still wrestling with the concepts of Marx and Lenin, ‘The Illusion of the Epoch’ is the perfect resource for understanding the roots of Marxism-Leninism and its implications for philosophy, modern political thought, economics, and history. As Professor Tim Fuller has written, this “is not an intemperate book, but rather an effort at a sustained, scholarly argument against Marxian views.” Far from demonising his subject, Acton scrupulously notes where Marx’s account of historical and economic events and processes is essentially accurate. However, Acton also points out that Marx is generally right about things that were already widely known and accepted in his own time and indeed had been long understood in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, Acton shows that in many cases Marx either is simply wrong or has stated his views so as to render his theories immune to disproof. Acton also explains why the embodiment of Marxist-Leninist theory in an actual social order would require coercive support if it were not, sooner or later, to collapse of its own contradictions.
Celebrating the Hero
Camilia Draper, an American teenager still feeling guilt and loss about her mother’s death, travels to her mother’s birthplace in Colombia for a ceremony celebrating her famous grandfather, about whom she will learn some disquieting and revelatory facts.