Presents twenty true stories of athletes--mostly admirable, occasionally quirky--whose physical accomplishments create a world of thrills and spills.

A biography of Cesar Chavez, from age ten when he and his family lived happily on their Arizona ranch, to age thirty-eight when he led a peaceful protest against California migrant workers' miserable working conditions.

It's no secret that Beethoven went deaf, that Mozart had constant money problems, and that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote musicals. But what were these people-and other famous musicians-really like? What did they eat? What did they wear? How did they spend their time? And-possibly most interesting of all-what did their neighbors think? Discover the fascinating and often humorous stories of twenty famous musicians-people of all shapes, sizes, temperaments,...

Profiles many of history's most noteworthy scientists, from Zhang Heng and Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein and Barbara McClintock, sharing lesser-known facts about their favorite activities, relationships, and eccentricities.

A millennia-long history of animal keeping shares facts about what zookeeping has taught humanity and how individual lives have been profoundly shaped by the wild creatures found in zoos all over the world.

Examines the ten amendments to the United States Constitution that make up the Bill of Rights, explaining what the amendments mean, how they have been applied, and the rights they guarantee.

Describes the 1963 March on Washington, helmed by Martin Luther King, Jr., where over two hundred thousand people gathered to demand equal rights for all races, and explains why this event is still important in American history today.

For more than thirty years-half his life-he was obsessively devoted to investigating Everything in the natural world. Nothing escaped his interest-how our eyes see, why the sky is blue, what forces build mountains, how light travels, where water comes from, and-most fascinating of all to Leonardo-the inner workings of the human body. Nothing stopped him. It was illegal to dissect human corpses, so he did autopsies in secret, even devising a clever...

An illustrated introduction to the life of the Indian princess Pocahontas and her contact with English settlers, especially John Smith.