Biographies - Ebooks for Students - Page 2

Cover with a sketch of Carson

Sea and Earth: The Life of Rachel Carson

August 16, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks /by Jim McCabe

Download in epub format for Chromebooks, and Apple devices:

Download for Kindle Fires or other Amazon devices:

This is the story of the most important science writer of the 20th century. With “Silent Spring” Rachel Carson shocked Americans into reevaluating the man-made chemicals that have polluted our whole environment. Carson “jolted the entire country into awareness of the problem” of pesticides.” Her book “launched the environmental movement; provoked the passage of the Clean Air Act…the Clean Water Act…and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

By drawing much of his story from the recollections of Rachel Carson’s friends and colleagues, the author presents a well-rounded portrait of a woman who was a dedicated scientist and gifted writer, a devoted daughter and friend, and above all, a determined defender of the natural world she understood so well.

This biography won the Christopher Award in 1971 which is presented to the producers, directors, and writers of books, motion pictures and television specials that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit”. It is given by The Christophers, a Christian organization founded in 1945 by the Maryknoll priest James Keller.

cover with photo of Diego Rivera

My Art, My Life, An Autobiography by Diego Rivera

August 16, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, Free Ebooks, Latino History, Primary Source /by Jim McCabe

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Download for Kindle Fire tablets and Amazon ereaders:

Diego Rivera stands among the titans of our century. A man of phenomenal energy, he not only transformed the art of his country, but helped to transform its social structure as well. In the course of his tempestuous career, he defied presidents, dictators, millionaires, and the arbiters of artistic fashion. Often forced into hiding or exile during his lifetime, he is now enshrined in the pantheon of his country. His activities brought him into personal relationships not only with the artistic and political leaders of Mexico but with the famous and powerful abroad.
Rivera revolutionized modern mural painting and was the principal figure in launching the “Mexican Renaissance,” which is now regarded as one of the great periods in the history of world art.
This was an artist who could not separate his work — always his chief devotion — from his life. Like the man himself, his autobiography is full of conflict and color: the battles which surrounded his murals in the Detroit Art Institute, Rockefeller Center, and the Hotel del Prado are recounted in detail and with fervor.
The absorbing story of this epochal man, drawn from his own words as dictated over a period of ten years to the American journalist, Gladys March, makes a book that is certain to become one of the classics of art literature. With a quality all its own, it contains something of the frankness of Benvenuto Cellini, the impassioned suffering of Van Gogh, and the social vision of Kathe Kollwitz. Illustrated with personal photographs as well as some of Diego Rivera’s greatest works, My Art, My Life will rank among the most important books of recent years.
GLADYS MARCH studied art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Museum in New York, the Pitti Palace in Florence. the Louvre in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid. She has written columns and features on kings, movie stars, and celebrities from all walks of life. But until she met Diego Rivera in 1945, on a newspaper assignment to interview him, she had never felt the desire to write a hook about any one person. The initial interview led to a ten-year project, during which years the artist dictated his life story to her. Mrs. March’s work was checked by Diego Rivera from time to time up to a few months before his death in 1957. The finished manuscript was read and approved by Emma Hurtado Rivera, the artist’s widow.

Image of Geronimo

Geronimo by Jim Kjelgaard

August 15, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, Biography, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Native American /by Jim McCabe

Epub or Mobi?

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and in one case for Amazon devices. As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send to Kindle program. A great feature of the Send to Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send to Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

So if you are using this ebook on Apple, or Android devices, or in the Send to Kindle program, you can download this epub file below.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

From reviewers on Goodreads:

A very interesting story. It gave a lot more understanding of Geronimo and the Apaches.

*******

Hurrah for a truly engaging biography that doesn’t hide its subject’s faults, doesn’t engage in hagiography, but DOES present its subject in heroic terms. That’s a hard balance to find, but Kjelgaard did.

His writing is also that perfect blend of vivid storytelling with accurate information on culture and history. AND, even better, there’s plenty of white space; the pacing in the book is a good fit for upper elementary/middle grades readers who aren’t advanced readers (but even advanced readers would enjoy this story). It’s a good introduction to the racial tensions in the 19th century that weren’t slavery related.

I wish this book was easier to find!

*******
Very good primer on Geronimo, one of the last Apache war chiefs. A story of the last days of the free Apache tribes.

Cover of Guardians of Liberty

Guardians of Liberty: Sam Adams and John Hancock by Olga Hall-Quest

February 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, Biography, For Young Adults, Founders, Free Ebooks /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

f you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size. Download mobi file here.

Olga Hall-Quest tells the story of the beginnings of the Revolution and of the men who made it with the same lively skill that made her Jamestown Adventure so popular. The excitement of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill are captured anew, as two of the great figures of eighteenth-century America, Sam Adams and John Hancock, come to life again.

Sam Adams worked untiringly to bring about an independent America. He fought against any infringement of colonial liberties with every skill at his command. It was Adams, who by his writings and his gift of persuasion, his hatred of Tory and aristocratic pretensions, rallied the people of Massachusetts Bay against the Stamp Act. It was he who drafted the call for the Stamp Act Congress, and who won Paul Revere and Joseph Warren to the cause of liberty.

To the dismay of the aristocratic Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Adams managed to turn John Hancock, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, into an advocate of liberty and a supporter of the Whig faction. Adams well knew the value of John Hancock to a cause. Hancock paid for entertainment, food, and so on, at Whig rallies and outings, and by his generosity to the poor of Boston won a large popular following.

Ruthless, unyielding, Sam Adams was, perhaps, our first publicist. Vernon Parrington wrote of him: “Behind the imposing figure of John Hancock, or the eloquence of John Adams, was certain to be the directing mind of the ‘Master of the puppets,’ as Thomas Hutchinson sneeringly called Sam Adams.”

Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston Massacre, which we have adapted for our jacket, is an example of how Sam Adams used events to further his goal of an independent America, for this highly exaggerated drawing depicts Adams’s version of the “massacre.”

The reading level from the Flesh-Kincaid scale is 9.0.

images of men standing

Founding Fathers by Kenneth Umbreit

February 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, Biography, For Young Adults, Founders, Free Ebooks /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size. Download mobi file here.

Clever Character Sketches

I found this book delightful. Kenneth Umbreit is a storyteller. Here is the lead sentence from the chapter on George Washington. “The deeper one delves into the record the more evident it becomes that if it had not been for George Washington there would never have been a United States.” This pulled me into the chapter; I needed to know how Washington helped launch the United States.

He respects the Founders but is not worshipful. He writes of their beliefs and courage and tenacity in accounts that are both readable and instructive. A reviewer wrote that Umbreit wrote “clever character sketches.” And even though the book was written over a generation ago, Umbreit’s point of view is modern. He notes defects. He did not ignore Jefferson’s backward views on slavery and wrote that he stayed “safe” on slavery in order not to offend fellow plantation owners.

The first chapter on Thomas Jefferson is a little complicated. Umbreit explains the influences of common law and natural law and the beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons in England on Jefferson’s thinking. Easier starting points are the chapters on Sam Adams, Patrick Henry and John Hancock. The reading level of Sam Adams is 9.7, Patrick Henry 10.1. and John Hancock, 9.2. The first chapter on Thomas Jefferson is 10.9.

Reviews at the time the original publication were positive. “Umbreit’s book is the work of a historical scholar with a flair for popularizing biography and drawing clever character sketches,” wrote Roy F. Nichols in The New England Quarterly. “Skillful strokes make intriguing portraits of Jefferson, John Adams, Hancock, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and George Washington. …One gets the impression that somehow Jefferson is the villain of the piece. Hancock is displayed as an astute self-serving politician whose vanity made it possible for clever men to use him. John Adams appears as usual. Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry are master politicians with the latter treated more gently than usual of late because the author thinks him the victim of Jefferson’s talent for “the assassination of reputation.” The hero is Washington, without whom Umbreit thinks “there would never be a United States.” Umbreit thinks of him as one of the “fierce men” in history,” like William the Conqueror with a talent for organization and money-making. Thus these six men are portrayed with a wealth of detail illuminating the complexities of their characters.”

image of James Madison

James Madison: Father of the Constitution by Alfred Steinberg

February 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, Biography, For Young Adults, Founders, Free Ebooks /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kinde.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size. Download mobi file here.

The son of a Virginia planter, James Madison was at Princeton when he first became fired with an unshakable dream—the importance of a unified nation with freedom and liberty for all. This persistent idea was later to become the nucleus in his design for a strong national government under the rule of “We the people . . .”

A shy man of twenty-five, but with firm convictions, he was elected to the Virginia legislature and drafted a constitution for that state. Elected to the Continental Congress when he was not yet thirty, he served for four years, and later for another two. During this time he was instrumental in calling together a Federal Constitutional Convention, and was master architect in the actual drafting of the Constitution.

Always a champion of liberal causes, Madison had proposed amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing to the people such basic rights as freedom of speech, assembly and worship. When enacted, these amendments became part of the Bill of Rights, the keystone of American democracy.

Masterly in argument, shrewd in controversy, he helped repeal the hated Alien and Sedition Acts that threatened the rights of every American. And as Secretary of State under Jefferson, he was involved in such dramatic events as the Louisiana Purchase and the Hamilton-Burr duel.

As fourth president of the United Stales, Madison fell heir to the strained diplomatic relations with England that culminated in the War of 1812. When the British burned the White House, his wife Dolley saved the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In 1817 he retired to his Virginia estate where he wrote extensively on public affairs until his death at the age of eighty-five.

A penetrating portrayal of a man whose dedication to freedom helped shape America’s most important document.

Launching Plane at Kitty Hawk

here

February 7, 2019/0 Comments/in Biographies, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, With a Study Guide /by Jim McCabe

To read this ebook on a computer, or tablet using Calibre, or Google Play Books, or iBooks on your iPad, download this epub format.

To download a mobi file for your Amazon device, click below.

Directions on how to email this file to your Kindle device are here.
To add this mobi file to your Kindle for PC software to read the chapters on your computer, see these instructions .

The Kindle Personal Document Service allows teachers, or librarians to send a mobi file to up to 15 student Kindle email addresses at a time.

With Calibre, you and your students can read this ebook in epub format on computer screens. By changing the background color, and enlarging the font, the reading experience on a computer screen is reasonable. On Chromebooks, the operating system will offer an ereading app when you open the epub file.

In this fascinating, highly readable biography, Fred C. Kelly, a former newspaperman, author, and an old friend of the Wrights, tells the story of the two brilliant, dedicated, flight-obsessed bicycle mechanics from Ohio who first realized mankind’s age-old dream of conquering the skies.

Long considered the definitive Wright biography (the manuscript was read and approved by Orville Wright), this book recounts the Wrights’ small-town boyhood, their early interest in all things mechanical, the establishment of the Wright Cycle Shop, and the complete behind-the-scenes story of how they designed, built, tested, and flew (December 1903) the first “Flyer.”

Enhanced with sixteen rare photographs, Mr. Kelly’s engaging account avoids minute technical description, yet describes simply and clearly the technological innovations that enabled the two brothers to succeed where so many others had failed. Anyone interested in the mechanics of flight or early aviation will find this volume a splendid introduction to the Wright brothers and their epochal achievement.

Grade level from a sample of four chapters in the Flesch-Kincaid analysis is 10.3.

The Mosquito Man: The Story of Ronald Ross by John Rowland

September 4, 2017/0 Comments/in Biographies, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, History of Science /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download mobi file here.

Ronald Ross always remembered his childhood in India, and his father King on the veranda, groaning with fever—malaria fever. Who, in those days, dreamed that this deadly disease was caused by the little, biting mosquitoes that were such a nuisance wherever there was water for them to breed in?

Years later, Ross returned to India as a doctor, and made a great discovery that was to be of value to the whole world—that the germs of the lever that had so affected his father breed in the stomach of mosquitoes, which act as a sort of miniature hypodermic syringe to carry malaria from sick men to healthy ones.

Here is the fascinating story of how Sir Ronald Ross brought the malaria menace under control. In 1902 Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine; 1926 marked the opening of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases. And today, in Malaya, in Africa, in India, in China, in Japan—wherever there is malaria, Sir Ronald Ross will be remembered gratefully, because he showed men how to conquer a killing disease.

The Penicillin Man: The Story of Alexander Fleming by John Rowland

September 4, 2017/0 Comments/in Biographies, Electives, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, History of Science /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download mobi file here.

Reviews

“This book is more than the story of a great discovery. It is an inspiring account of the rewards, both in fame and personal satisfaction, that a scientific career offers.”—New York Times.

“A readable story about a great personality.”—Virginia Kirkus.

“From Scottish farm boy to Nobel Prize winner, this book traces the events that led a brilliant mind to a new concept in the treatment of disease: the body has natural defenses against disease that must be discovered and enhanced. Teenagers who have grown up in the security of antibiotics will gain a perspective on medicine’s swift progress in the few years since Fleming discovered the bacteria-killing mold “—Scholastic Teacher.

Blurb

One morning in September 1928 a scientist at St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, noticed that an experiment he was working on had been ruined by an accident. Some bacteria he was studying had been damaged by a colony of mould spores.

The scientist was Alexander Fleming. The mould contained the substance from which the drug penicillin is made. The accident led to one of the greatest medical discoveries of modern times. It cost Fleming and the scientists who followed up his discovery many years of labor ; but the result was a life-saving substance which even cautious scientists called a miracle.

This is the story of how the miracle worked, and of the man who made it possible.

Photo of Two older African Americans

The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves by Benjamin Drew

September 1, 2017/0 Comments/in African-American History, Biographies, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Resistance /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle for Amazon device.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and does not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

A Review from The Wall Street Journal

“To compile this book, Benjamin Drew, a white abolitionist from Plymouth, Mass., visited 14 communities in Canada and transcribed the stories of more than 100 formerly enslaved people. The result is a chorus of voices illuminating a harrowing chapter of history and the astonishing feats of resistance that ultimately beat back the system of American chattel slavery. Occupying a mere half-page near the beginning of the book is Harriet Tubman. She opens: “I grew up like a neglected weed—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.” The many narratives here are as ripe with metaphor as they are with exquisitely detailed recollections of the land and people encountered during escape, and with wonderfully rich descriptions of often-prosperous enterprises created once freedom was achieved. This is the Underground Railroad’s multiperson memoir, with all the power and gravitas of an epic poem.” (From the The Wall Street Journal. “Five Best: Books on the Underground Railroad.” Selected by Kai Thomas, the author, most recently, of ‘In the Upper Country.’ By Kai Thomas January 13, 2023)

Reviewers on GoodReads

“Most slave stories I’ve come across end in total despair and hopelessness. This is different. These are the victory stories of freedom in the face of daunting hopelessness, but they did it, they freed themselves! Still the lives of those brave souls faced other troubles. You feel with them, but freedom often gave a sense of relief despite almost everything else.”
“I found this book by chance at a library book sale!
It is a collection of over 100 testimonies of slaves who escaped the United States by way of the Underground Railroad to Canada.
The effect of reading testimony after testimony of the fugitive slaves as they enter Canada is incredibly moving. And these are simply reports, just taking down the facts. For any emotion, you’ll have to read between the lines.
These accounts, as you can imagine, give the reader a glimpse into the brutality, loss of dignity, and inhumane-ness of the slave trade. Even the few who were “treated well” were longing for freedom and even willing to risk their lives to find it.
This book should be required reading! It is such a valuable record (straight from the mouths of slaves and not an interpretation of their stories) and gives insights into attitudes towards issues of race and slavery, the echoes of which we still – and must continue to – wrestle with today.”