The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Review:
Here is the beginning of a review from the New York Times. The entire review is in the front matter of the eBook.
From the New York Times, November 19, 1944.
THE VALLEY AND ITS PEOPLE: A
Portrait of TVA. By R.L. Duffus and
Charles Krutch. 167 pp. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf. $2.75.
By D. F. FLEMING
Professor of Political Science Vanderbilt University
“THIS Is an important volume and it is also one of the most delightful books this reviewer has ever read. Printed on a format a little larger than usual, and in large print, it contains 200 photographs portraying as nothing else could the majesty of the TVA undertaking and its many-sided stimulation of the life of the valley people. It can all be read in two or three hours of vivid adventure.
“The text, by R. L. Duffus. tells the story of the greatest experiment in area development in our history. It begins with the havoc man had wrought in the valley— 2,500,000 acres of land ruined beyond repair; traces the long struggle to utilize the immense Wilson dam built during World War I at Muscle Shoals, and describes the decision in 1933 not only to use the dam but to build many others and develop the great valley as a whole.
“It was fortunate that a man of long vision, Senator George W. Norris, sat as the head of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry when the time came to commission TVA to work for the maximum of (1) flood control; (2) navigation; (3) electric power; (4) land development; 15) reforestation; (6) “the economic and social well-being of the people.” Norris stood, staunchly for all these objectives, but especially for the last. …”
Thurgood Marshall: From His Early Years to Brown by Michael D. Davis and Hunter R. Clark
in African-American History, Biographies, For Young Adults, Free EbooksDownload in epub format:
Download in mobi format for Amazon devices:
Editorial reviews:
“Michael Davis and Hunter Clark have crafted a thoughtful, carefully researched and focused biography.” —USA Today
“Well-written, informative and lively.” —People
“Michael D. Davis and Hunter R. Clark offer a masterfully written tale of an American legend.” — Gannett News Service
“Filled with the same fire, passion and humor that drove Marshall’s life, Thurgood Marshall is a revealing portrait of a pioneering lawyer.” —National Black Review
This ebook edition is the first half of the 1992 print edition of “Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench.” This new edition covers Thurgood Marshall’s youth, education, and the legal strategies he used, and the cases he argued leading up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The reviews above are from the print edition.
Publisher’s Note:
Chapter 1 describes Thurgood Marshall’s place in history.
Chapter 2 explains the challenges Marshall and the attorneys of the N.A.A.C.P were to face as they built the precedents that led to the Brown decision.
Chapter 3 is about Marshall’s childhood in Jim Crow Baltimore, and is probably the best starting point for high school students who want to begin with a straight-forward story of the life of a courageous leader. This chapter lends itself to writing assignments such as “Compare your public school years to what Thurgood Marshall experienced in Baltimore.” Not only will students have to read the chapter to complete the writing assignment, but there will be space for their own voices in the assignment. They may find this comparison more interesting than a book report.
Chapter 4 describes his years in Howard University Law School, and the work of his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, who saw how the law school and its graduates could fight racial injustice.
Subsequent chapters describe the work Marshall did on the cases leading up to the Brown decision, his civil rights work in the South, and his push for fair treatment of Black G.I.s during the Korean War.
Elective 1: Reading and Writing about World War II at a 6th Grade to 8th Grade Level
in Free Ebooks, Military History, World War IIThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Enjoy descriptions and links to fourteen eBooks written at the 6th to 8th grade level. Please preview each book since the subject matter in some texts is disburbing.
Elective 2: Reading and Writing World War II at 9th-10th Grade Reading Levels
in Free Ebooks, Military History, World War IIThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Enjoy descriptions and links to four eBooks written at the 9th to 10th grade level. The titles are:
Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? by H.R. Knickerbocker: The Rise of Hitler
No Woman’s World by Iris Carpenter: U.S. Army in Western Europe
Purple Heart Valley by Margaret Bourke-White: Torpedoed in the Mediterranean
Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly by Margaret Bourke-White: A Report on the Collapse of Hitler’s ‘Thousand Years’
Elective 3: Reading and Writing Black History at 6th-8th Grade Reading Level
in African-American History, Electives, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Reconstruction, Resistance, The Harlem RenaissanceThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Enjoy descriptions and links to nine eBooks written at the 6th to 8th grade level. The titles are:
The Long Black Schooner by Emma Gelders Sterne: The Voyage of the Amistad
Revolts, Resistance and Emancipation by Dorothy Sterling: How Slaves and Society Resisted Slavery
The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves by Benjamin Drew: Fleeing to Safety in Canada
Three Autobiographies by Frederick Douglass: How the Abolitionist Leader Resisted Slavery
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson: His Travels in the North and South
Home to Harlem by Claude McKay: Life in Harlem in the 1920s
Fire in the Flint by Walter E. White: A Doctor Returns to the Jim Crow South
W. E. B. Du Bois by Emma Gelders Sterne: A Founder of the N.A.A.C.P
Mary McLeod Bethune by Emma Gelders Sterne: She Defended the Right to Vote and Built a College
Elective 4: Reading and Writing Black History at a Reading Level of 9th-12th Grade
in African-American History, Electives, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Reconstruction, Resistance, The Harlem RenaissanceThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Enjoy descriptions and links to nine eBooks written at the 9th to 12th grade level. The titles are:
The Black Napoleon by Percy Waxman: the Story of Toussaint L’Overture
Flight to Freedom by Henrietta Buckmaster: the Story of the Underground Railroad
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War by Henrietta Buckmaster: Freedmen and the Struggle for Political Rights
Freedom Ride by James Peck: Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation in the South
Harlem─People, Power and Politics, 1900-1950 by Roi Ottley: Profiles of Harlem’s Leaders
Thurgood Marshall from His Early Years to Brown by Hunter R. Clark: a Window into American History
Thurgood Marshall─His Triumph in Brown, His Years on the Supreme Court by Hunter R. Clark: Capital Punishment, Abortion, Affirmative Action, the Right to Counsel and Other Issues
Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett, Jr.: the History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962
The Lonely Warrior─The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott by Roi Ottley: a Publisher Encourages Migration North
Teaching U.S. History with eBooks and Electives by Jim McCabe
in African-American History, Connecting Reading and Writing Assignments, Electives, Free Ebooks, History of Science, How To Share Ebooks with Your Students, Labor History, Latino History, Military HistoryThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
This is a guidebook to ninety free eBooks, primarily about American history, from three non-profits: Project Gutenberg, StandardeBooks, and this site. The idea is that skimming the guidebook will be more efficient than opening and skimming each eBook on this site. I selected books which I think will be huge improvements on the World History and American textbooks used in many classrooms. I promise that each book in this collection is more dramatic than an textbook in my collection of textbooks. In addition to my search for drama, I tried to find books at a variety of reading levels so that weak readers would have materials to read.
As I wrote the descriptions of the books, I often included suggestions for related writing assignments. Writing in high school matters a great deal in my opinion. The failure rates in writing classes at the community college where I taught were painful and could have been avoided with more practice at the high school level.
I found that requiring references to the reading in each writing assignment coerced students into doing more of the reading. I also found that including space for students’ voices in each writing assignment led to more energetic essays, but I digress.
Please send your comments, corrections, and suggestions for digitizing other out of print books to me at feedback@ebooksforstudents.org.
Regards,
Jim McCabe
Sea and Earth: The Life of Rachel Carson
in Biographies, For Young Adults, Free EbooksDownload 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.
The Valley and its People: A Portrait of TVA by R. L. Duffus
in For Young Adults, Free EbooksThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Review:
Here is the beginning of a review from the New York Times. The entire review is in the front matter of the eBook.
From the New York Times, November 19, 1944.
THE VALLEY AND ITS PEOPLE: A
Portrait of TVA. By R.L. Duffus and
Charles Krutch. 167 pp. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf. $2.75.
By D. F. FLEMING
Professor of Political Science Vanderbilt University
“THIS Is an important volume and it is also one of the most delightful books this reviewer has ever read. Printed on a format a little larger than usual, and in large print, it contains 200 photographs portraying as nothing else could the majesty of the TVA undertaking and its many-sided stimulation of the life of the valley people. It can all be read in two or three hours of vivid adventure.
“The text, by R. L. Duffus. tells the story of the greatest experiment in area development in our history. It begins with the havoc man had wrought in the valley— 2,500,000 acres of land ruined beyond repair; traces the long struggle to utilize the immense Wilson dam built during World War I at Muscle Shoals, and describes the decision in 1933 not only to use the dam but to build many others and develop the great valley as a whole.
“It was fortunate that a man of long vision, Senator George W. Norris, sat as the head of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry when the time came to commission TVA to work for the maximum of (1) flood control; (2) navigation; (3) electric power; (4) land development; 15) reforestation; (6) “the economic and social well-being of the people.” Norris stood, staunchly for all these objectives, but especially for the last. …”
Shirley Chisholm by Susan Brownmiller
in African-American History, Biographies, Free EbooksThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
Critics’ Corner:
“The author chronicles major events in Shirley
Chisholm’s life and career from her childhood in
Barbados through her first year as Representative
of Brooklyn’s newly created 12th Congressional
District in a chatty, narrative account that under
scores the dynamic personality of the first black
Congresswoman. . . . Brownmiller takes note of the
people, both historic and contemporary, who aided
or influenced Mrs. Chisholm. . . . The book also
offers insight into political organization at the local
level.” —A.L.A. Booklist
“A winning personal portrait, a fix on the political facts of life, and preeminently the projection of a Black woman who wouldn’t be detoured on either account. . . . Notable are the explicitness . . . and the sharp, sensitive delineation of scene. . . .”
—The Kirkus Reviews
“. . . inspirational and motivational reading. . . .”
—Library Journal
Other Recommendations: Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, University of Chicago; Child Study Association.
About the Author:
Susan Brownmiller is a well-known journalist who writes articles for The New York Times, The Village Voice, and other important publications. Her cover story on Shirley Chisholm for The New York Times Magazine led to her writing this longer biography for young readers. Miss Brownmiller grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Greenwich Village in New York City.
So Big by Edna Ferber
in Fiction, For Young Adults, Free EbooksHere is the epub format:
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Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber’s crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago’s high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler’s daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges. This is the stunning and unforgettable “novel to read and to remember” by an author who “critics of the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to call the greatest American woman novelist of her day” (New York Times).
So Big is a brilliant literary masterwork from one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished and admired writers, and still resonates today with its unflinching views of poverty, sexism, and the drive for success.
Mary McLeod Bethune
in African-American History, Biographies, For Young Adults, Free EbooksTo read this ebook using Google Play Books on your tablet, or computer, or iBooks on an iPad, download this epub format.
To read on a device from Amazon, or on the Kindle app on your computer, here is the ebook in mobi format.
Directions on how to email this file to your device are here.
To add this mobi file to your Kindle for PC software to read the chapters on your computer, see instructions at http://tinyurl.com/y8gsazq.
This is the challenging and inspired true story of a little girl who was determined to learn to read, and who went on to be a teacher, the founder of a college, an adviser to statesmen, and a great humanitarian. Mary McLeod Bethune was the fifteenth child of hardworking and god fearing parents. She was the first of their children to be born free. Her ancestry was wholly of African origin, a point of pride throughout her life.
Mrs. Bethune worked untiringly to restore—through education—her people’s faith in the magnificent heritage that is rightfully theirs. During the many years of and tribulation, she refused to give up her fondest dream—her own school for Negro children. And, as a shining monument to her hard work and faith, she has given to black youth the thriving institution of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.