With cities across the country adding miles of bike lanes and building bike-share stations, bicycling is enjoying a new surge of popularity in America. It seems that every generation or two, Americans rediscover the freedom of movement, convenience, and relative affordability of the bicycle. The earliest two-wheeler, the draisine, arrived in Philadelphia in 1819 and astonished onlookers with the possibility of propelling themselves "like lightning."...

Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he called the "Arkestra." Sun Ra took jazz from the inner city to outer space, infusing traditional swing with far-out harmonies, rhythms, and sounds. Described as the father of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra created "space music" as a means of building a better future for American...

In “Being Miss America”, Kate Shindle interweaves an engrossing, witty memoir of her year as Miss America 1998 with a fascinating history of the pageant. She explores what it means to take on the mantle of America's "ideal," especially considering the evolution of the American female identity since the pageant's inception. Shindle profiles winners and organization leaders and recounts important moments in the pageant's story, with a special focus...

This biography of the singer, actor, and fearless anti-racism activist is "so engaging that readers will crave a sequel" (Kirkus Reviews). A son of poor Jamaican immigrants who grew up in Depression-era Harlem, Harry Belafonte became the first black performer to gain artistic control over the representation of African Americans in commercial television and film. Forging connections with an astonishing array of consequential players on the American...

True crime meets cultural history in this story of how America's interstate highway system opened a world of mobility and opportunity...for serial killers. Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet's largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them: the highway killer. He went by many names: the "Hitcher," the...

No country grows or changes in isolation, and the history of the United States demonstrates the interdependence of countries around the world. The United States' Role in the World explores how government policy and military intervention have influenced daily life, economics, culture, and more. The book analyzes major conflicts and policy changes from the earliest days of America until present day, including the American Revolution, World War I, World...

The United States is known as a nation of innovators, from the first colonists who endeavored to find religious freedom and economic opportunity in the New World to business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie to the cutting-edge inventors in Silicon Valley today. From its first days as a nation to the Industrial Revolution and beyond, America has focused on creating new businesses, technologies, labor systems, and trade patterns. In turn, this focus has...

From the arrival of English settlers in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, American society was rooted in British Puritanism. Although whispers of that earlier Puritanical society remain, today's American culture is dramatically different. This volume traces the events that led to these societal changes, discussing such occurrences as the American Revolution, the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, spikes in immigration,...

From the very beginning it would seem that God had a plan for America. From its discovery by Europeans to its settlement, from the Revolution to Manifest Destiny, from the stirrings of civil unrest to civil war, America was on a path. In our pluralistic world, when textbooks are being rewritten in ways that obscure the Judeo-Christian beginnings of our country, the books in the Discovering God's Plan for America series help ground young readers in...

With more than 15 million residents, Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America. It is bordered to the north by Mexico, and to the east by Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. In Guatemala the ruins of ancient Mayan temples rise above jungle vegetation, and churches and forts from the Spanish colonial period stand next to modern architecture in cities like Guatemala City, Mixco, and Villa Nueva. From 1960 until 1996, Guatemala was torn...