Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Guided by Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people, this series of 64-page biographies focuses on the leaders, scientists, and icons who shaped our world. These people, many from very humble beginnings, changed how the world works. Each biography includes a glossary, timeline, and illustrations. An individual guide for each title provides reproducible activities to extend the text. Born in Germany in 1929, Anne Frank was a teenager during World War II. Because Anne was Jewish, she and her family were forced to escape the terror of the Holocaust that swept the continent. Beginning in 1942, Anne kept a diary of the difficult journey of her family. See how Anne’s family tried to escape the horror of the war, and how her diary became her best friend.

Albert Einstein

Yorkist Lord

Yorkist Lord

John Howard, baron Howard and first duke of Norfolk, was one of the most important men of the Yorkist period. He was a consistently loyal supporter of the Yorkist dynasty from the late 1450s until his death at Bosworth in 1485. He was an indefatigable royal servant, active in the military field, as an agent of the Crown at home in East Anglia, as a councillor at Westminster and as an ambassador who became England’s leading envoy to France. And yet there were other men of the period, equally significant in their careers, for whom no biographies have been forthcoming.

Yorkist Lord

Islam and the Army in Colonial India

Islam and the Army in Colonial India

This book was first published in 2009. Set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book, a study of the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India, focuses on the soldiers’ relationships with the faqir holy men who protected them and the British officers they served. Drawing on Urdu as well as European sources, the book uses the biographies of Muslim holy men and their military followers to recreate the extraordinary encounter between a barracks culture of miracle stories, carnivals, drug-use and madness with a colonial culture of mutiny memoirs, Evangelicalism, magistrates and the asylum. It explores the ways in which the colonial army helped promote this sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it. The book brings to light the existence of a distinct ‘barracks Islam’ and shows its importance to the cultural no less than the military history of colonial India.

Islam and the Army in Colonial India

The Harvest of a Century

The Harvest of a Century

Physics was the leading science of the twentieth century and the book retraces important discoveries, made between 1895 and 2001, in 100 self-contained episodes. Each is a short story of the scientists involved, their time, and their work. Together they form a mosaic of modern physics: formulating relativity and quantum mechanics, finding the constituents of matter and unravelling the forces between them, understanding the working of conductors and semiconductors, discovering and explaining macroscopic quantum effects (superconductivity, superfluidity, quantum Hall effect), developing novel experimental techniques like the Geiger counter and particle accelerators, building revolutionary applications like the transistor and the laser, and observing astonishing features of our cosmos (expanding universe, cosmic background radiation). The text is intended for easy reading. Occasionally, a more thorough discussion of experimental set-ups and theoretical concepts is presented in special boxes for readers interested in more detail. Episodes contain extensive references to biographies and original scientific literature. The book is richly illustrated by about 600 portraits, photographs and figures.

The Harvest of a Century

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

Essential Lives introduces the people who have shaped the world, impacted humanity, and changed the course of history. Biographies, historic events, current debates, and social issues are all an essential part of the curriculum. Readers can meet these research needs with the Essential Library, a well-researched, well-written, and beautifully designed imprint. The Essential Library offers tremendous study tools: -Primary research and sources -Maps, color images, and historic documents -Timelines -Essential Facts–an overview of each topic -Selected Bibliography -Further Reading -Web sites–to expand research -Contact information for related organizations -Glossaries -Source notes by chapter -Index -Author biography

Rachel Carson