Earle Rice Jr.

In the 1920s, life was good for most Americans-and great for many. Prosperity built on the new economic premise of buy now, pay later ruled the decade known as the Roaring Twenties. Then the bubble burst, and America s house of cards came tumbling down. With stunning suddenness, the stock market Crash of 29 revealed the flaws in America s economy and plunged the nation into the worst depression it had ever known. The troubled citizenry called on...

The Evolution of Government and Politics: China provides an opportunity to explore the government and political structure of China and how the nation s government evolved and changed through history. The young reader is encouraged to analyze past events and draw conclusions about how outside factors modified China s political system and world influence. The China title has been developed to address many of the Common Core specific goals, higher level...

Examines the events of the Persian Gulf War in 1990 from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in early August to the ceasefire on Thursday February 28 1991.

Acclaimed as the most beautiful woman of her time, Eleanor of Aquitaine uniquely shaped 12th-century Europe. As the wife of two kings and the mother of three others, her beauty, grace, style, and intellect captivated a continent. At a time when men regarded women as little more than personal property to be owned and exploited, Eleanor threw off the shackles of male dominance and scribed an indelible mark on the history of France and England. As France's...

Sir Walter Raleigh streaked across the Elizabethan heavens like a bright, shining star. Often regarded as a true Renaissance man that is, a man gifted with many talents and abilities he lived life to the fullest. Born to adventure, Raleigh parlayed a sharp mind and a yen for prestige and power into enough living for a dozen lesser men. As soldier, swashbuckler, writer, historian, poet, explorer, businessman, and more, he rose in favor at the court...

An introduction to Adolf Hitler's tactic of combining air attacks with swiftly moving ground forces.

Boko Haram is running wild, spreading death and destruction deep in the heart of Africa. Its very name has become a national symbol for fear in Nigeria. Allied with the Islamic State, and inspired by a distorted vision of a worldwide caliphate, the threat of its presence casts a dark shadow over the lives of all Nigerians within its grasp. And its grasp is spreading. Boko Haram, roughly translated, means "Western education is forbidden." Its members...

Hezbollah-Lebanon's "Party of Allah"-wears many faces. Founded by Muslim clerics following Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it is a powerful political party, a Shia Islamic religious and social movement, Lebanon's largest militia, and a close ally of Iran. Originally, Hezbollah's reason for being was to resist the Israel invaders. Over time, it grew from a small militia to a paramilitary group more powerful than the Lebanese Army. Trained and...

In January 2006, Palestinian voters shocked the Western world by giving Hamas a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections. Stunned Westerners found it hard to imagine how the blood-soaked Islamist terrorist organization won the support that brought it to power. Western thinkers found it harder yet to envisage how a Hamas government would play a positive role in Palestinian-Israeli relations. Hamas, an acronym for an Arab phrase meaning "Islamic...

Since the last flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011, America's manned space program has been put on hold. NASA has been forced to rely on Russian and commercial spacecraft to ferry personnel and supplies to the International Space Station. But NASA scientists and engineers, and their colleagues in the spaceflight community, are working hard to return America to its former dominance in space via the Orion program. Orion, America's next-generation spacecraft,...