"Motivated by potentially turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert Moses--New York's and quot;Master Builder and quot;--brought the World and rsquo;s Fair to the Big Apple for 1964 and and rsquo;65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964-65 World and rsquo;s Fair was a Sixties flashpoint in areas from politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime....

Wayne Greenhaw recounts his life and experiences as a journalist covering the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, describing his interviews with Klan members, detectives, victims, civil rights leaders, and politicians, and discussing the history of Governor George C. Wallace.

Twelve-year-old Isobel is unhappy about spending the summer of 1918 at her aunt's home in Hollywood with her mother and sister until her cousin, Ranger, involves the girls in creating the perfect film and, when her father returns from the war, his serious injury becomes their inspiration.

“The Epidemic” tells the story of how a vain and reckless businessman became responsible for a typhoid epidemic in 1903 that devastated Cornell University and the surrounding town of Ithaca, New York. Eighty-two people died, including twenty-nine Cornell students. Protected by influential friends, William T. Morris faced no retribution for this outrage. His legacy was a corporation-first known as Associated Gas & Electric Co. and later as General...

"A comprehensive look at World War II, this activity book encourages children to re-create life in the 1940s while learning about compassion, teamwork, and sacrifice. Touching upon nearly every aspect of the war-from the leadership of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt to the invention of new military technologies-a clear understanding of the causes and effects of World War II is provided through the hands-on creation of period-specific implements....

The last thing eleven-year-old Ruby Tabeata expected to happen on her way to a Jack Kerouac reading was to be hauled to the police station. It's 1958 and Ruby is the opposite of a 1950s stereotype: fierce, funny and strong willed, she is only just starting to chart her course in a family of Beat Generation artists in Greenwich Village, New York. Ruby dreams of meeting famous poets while becoming one herself; instead, she's accused of trying to steal...

The Queen of England has concocted a plan in which Lady Georgie is to entertain a Bavarian princess and conveniently place her in the playboy Prince's path, in the hopes that he might finally marry. But queens never take money into account. Georgie has very little, which is why she moonlights as a maid-in-disguise. She must draw up plans: clean house to make it look like a palace; have Granddad and her neighbor pretend to be the domestic staff; un-teach...

This collection, originally assembled by the author in 1922, features some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most impressive and recognized pieces of short fiction. Divided into three parts, the tales are a diverse assortment, including the whimsical "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the visceral "May Day," and the adventurous "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." Although he is better known for novels such as The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald...

In the early 1900s, Sylvie Pelletier leaves her family's Colorado mountain cabin to start work at a wealthy mine-owner's manor house and is fascinated by he luxury around her until she discovers the family's philosophy is at odds with the unfair labor practices that built their fortune.

Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement).
 
Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness.
 
These short...