National Network for Equitable Library Service

With razor-sharp insight, Broad shows how "unreasonable thinking" can drive innovation and positive change. Too often people look at problems and explain away possible solutions with logic such as, "It's never been done this way before." But Broad shows a better way for taking ideas to all-new levels of success.

Describes how their different political views caused friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to become rivals, until they learned to set aside their differences for the sake of their friendship.

Profiles Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, who made great strides in the invention of flight.

Baker offers an eye-opening account of Margaret Marcus' dramatic conversion from an American secular Jew to a proponent of radical Islam. In 1962, Margaret left New York for Lahore, Pakistan, changed her name, and quickly became one of Islam's loudest critics of the West.

Frances Hesselbein has built a career in leadership, serving as a top executive in numerous charitable organizations. Here she recounts her own story, in her own words, while detailing the many leadership lessons she learned from people like Presidents Reagan, H.W. Bush and Clinton, Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, and more.

Relates how one delegate to the Second Continental Congress battled bad weather and physical disabilities to arrive in Philadelphia in 1776, in time for the historic vote that led to independence.

Describes the role played by the chimpanzee, Ham, in developing manned space flight in the U.S.

A look at the deaths of several famous people throughout history and the circumstances surrounding those deaths.

Growing up in Warner Robins, Georgia, with her parents--and their loving but rocky relationship--isn't always easy for Lauretta. It doesn't help that the rest of her family is a who's who list of misfits and petty criminals. Learning from them and their experiences, Lauretta develops a keen wit and an observant eye, talents she then takes on the road to Savannah and even to Europe. There she encounters even more oddballs and colorful characters--many of whom are profiled here.

Caldwell was born in Texas in 1951; in a land of plains so vast they frightened her. Caldwell's mother was a clandestine lover of books; her father was a master sergeant in World War II. These personalities shaped Caldwell; during the passionate rebellions of the 1960s, she was one of the "children who once made life hell for 'the Greatest Generation' and in the process turned out pretty great themselves" (Russell Baker, author). Turning to books for each poignant change in her life, Caldwell eventually became what her mother could not: a writer.