Readers will travel back in time to ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece. They will meet the world's first astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists and explore the lives and ideas of such famous people as Pythagoras, Archimedes, Brahmagupta, al-Khwarizmi, Fibonacci, Ptolemy, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Hakim will introduce them to Aristotle—one of the greatest philosophers of all time—whose scientific ideas dominated much of the world for eighteen centuries.In the thr...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. Thousands of years--way before Christopher Columbus set sail--wandering tribes of hunters made their way from Asia across the Bering land bridge to North America. They didn't know it, but they had discovered a New World. The First Americans is a fascinating re-creation of pre-Columbian Native American life, and it's an adventure of a lifetime! Hunt sea...

In volume three, students will look over Albert Einstein's shoulder as he and his colleagues develop a new kind of physics. It leads in two directions: to knowledge of the vast universe and its future (insights build on Einstein's theories of relativity), and to an understanding of the astonishingly small subatomic world (the realm of quantum physics). Students will learn why relativity and quantum theory revolutionized our world and led to the most important ideas in modern science, maybe...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. Covering a time of great hope and incredible change, Reconstruction and Reform is a dramatic look at life after the Civil War in the newly re United States. Railroad tycoons were roaring across the country. New cities sprang up across the plains, and a new and different American West came into being: a land of farmers, ranchers, miners, and city dweller...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. All kinds of people are coming to America. If you're European, you come in search of freedom or riches. If you're African, you come in chains. And what about the Indians, what is happening to them? Soon with the influx of so many people, thirteen unique colonies are born, each with its own story. Meet Pocahontas and John Smith in Jamestown. Join William...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. How did compliant colonials with strong ties to Europe get the notion to become an independent nation? Perhaps the seeds of liberty were planted in the 1735 historic courtroom battle for the freedom of the press. Or maybe the French and Indian War did it, when colonists were called "Americans" for the first time by the English, and the great English ar...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. Covering a time of great hope and incredible change, Reconstruction and Reform is a dramatic look at life after the Civil War in the newly re United States. Railroad tycoons were roaring across the country. New cities sprang up across the plains, and a new and different American West came into being: a land of farmers, ranchers, miners, and city dweller...

In volume two, students will watch as Copernicus's systematic observations place the sun at the center of our universe—to the dismay of establishment thinkers. After students follow the achievements and frustrations of Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes, they will appreciate the amazing Isaac Newton, whose discoveries about gravity, motion, colors, calculus, and Earth's place in the universe set the stage for modern physics, astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry.In the three-book T...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. Beginning with George Washington's inauguration and continuing into the nineteenth century, The New Nation tells the story of the remarkable challenges that the freshly formed United States faced. Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territories (bought from France at a mere four cents an acre!), Lewis and Clark's daring expedition through this ...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. From woman's suffrage to Babe Ruth's home runs, from Louis Armstrong's jazz to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four presidential terms, from the finale of one world war to the dramatic close of the second, War, Peace, and All That Jazz presents the story of some of the most exciting years in U.S. history. With the end of World War I, many Americans decided...

Reading Science Stories is a book meant to celebrate nonfiction reading, especially narrative nonfiction, as a vehicle for understanding the world around us. We live in what is the greatest scientific era in all of human history, it also happens to be an Information Age, and nonfiction is a great medium for explanations, but many of our schools and book clubs are still mostly focused on fiction. That is changing with the understanding that narrative nonfiction can be as gripping as a novel...

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. All kinds of people are coming to America. If you're European, you come in search of freedom or riches. If you're African, you come in chains. And what about the Indians, what is happening to them? Soon with the influx of so many people, thirteen unique colonies are born, each with its own story. Meet Pocahontas and John Smith in Jamestown. Join William...