An astonishingly lyrical biography that rescues Schoenberg from notoriety, restoring him to his rightful place in the pantheon of twentieth-century composers "In his time, the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an international icon. His twelve-tone system was considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. With this interpretative...

"In over a decade of working with veterans, Johnny Joey Jones has discovered the power of battle-forged friendships. Suffering a life-changing injury while deployed in Afghanistan, he faced a daunting recovery. But coming home would have been much harder without the support of his brothers and sisters in arms. In Unbroken Bonds of Battle, Joey tells the stories of those very warriors, who for years have supported and inspired him on the battlefield...

"For as long as the British royal family has existed, their children have been brought up in ways that seem bizarre and eccentric to the rest of us—the royal family’s obsession with making their children tough and independent as early as possible, often by delegating their parental duties to staff, goes back centuries. Gilded Youth looks at centuries of growing up aristocratic and royal—from Edward VII smashing up his schoolroom...

"Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Michael Phelps began swimming at age seven at the urging of his mom. As a young boy, Michael was brimming with energy-more energy than most other kids his age-and Mrs. Phelps thought this sport could help keep him calm and focused. As Michael grew older, his skills improved, and he transformed into one of the greatest swimmers in the world, winning twenty-eight Olympic medals"--

Brief biographies in rhyme of 11 notable Latinos.

Celia Thaxter grew up on a desolate island off the coast of Maine, where her father worked as lighthouse keeper. Amid the white and gray of the sea, the rocks, and even the birds, young Celia found color where she could: green mosses and purple starfish and pink morning glories by the shore. And she planted her first garden, tucking bright marigolds between rocky ledges. When she was twelve, Celia's family moved to nearby Appledore Island, where her...

"When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to Greenwood, Tulsa, his family joined a growing community on the cusp of becoming the center of Black life in the West. But, just a few years later, on May 31, 1921, the teenaged Ed hid in a bathtub as a white mob descended on his neighborhood. They laid waste to 35 blocks and murdering as many as 300 people. The Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the worst acts of racist violence in United States history. The...

"El 16 de julio de 1945, en el desierto de Nuevo Mexico, se detonaba en secreto la primera bomba atomica. Impactado por el poder destructivo de su creacion, J. Robert Oppenheimer, director del Proyecto Manhattan, se comprometeria desde entonces a luchar contra el desarrollo de la bomba de hidrogeno y contra la guerra nuclear. Sospechoso de comunista para los Estados Unidos de la era McCarthy, fue perseguido por el FBI, calumniado como espia de la...

Las unicas pistas que tuvo Ariana Neumann de nina sobre la vida de su padre el empresario Hans Neumann; antes de llegar a la Venezuela que lo adoo eran una foto vieja de sus abuelos paternos, un documento de identidad con un nombre falso y la pasion de su papa por coleccionar y arreglar relojes. Todo cambio cuando Hans murio y le dejo a su hija una caja llena de cartas y documentos que seran el punto de partida para que Ariana se convierta la detective...

"In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...