Akron Public Library

In this book, the author, deadliest sniper in U.S. history tracks down and shoots the ten most important American firearms, from a flintlock rifle to a Colt revolver to the latest high-tech weapon he used as a Navy SEAL. He uses these guns as a window on United States history, making the sweeping argument that the American story has been tied to and shaped by the gun. He revisits turning points in American history, including the single sniper shot...

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

Hiroshima is the story of six people--a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest--who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize-winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through...

Bud Miles was a boy when he crossed the Mississippi. But Bud buried his father after an Indian attack, and as the wagon train pushed on through Sioux country, the boy stood as tall as any man ... Tell Sackett killed cougars at fourteen and fought a war at fifteen. Now Tell was hauling dangerous freight--a soldier's wife and a fortune in gold--knowing that someone wanted him dead ... Laurie Bonnet was a mail-order bride who thought she was a failure...

A translation of Thucydide's history of the wars between Athens and Sparta is critically introduced.

An abridged version of the tale of orphaned, eleven-year-old Pollyanna, who comes to live with austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, bringing happiness to her aunt and other members of the community through her philosophy of gladness. Pollyanna knows the secret to finding a smile -- even when really bad things happen. From the moment she arrives in Beldingsville, she shares her Glad Game with everyone around her. But the person who needs Pollyanna's help...

This book shares the sometimes gruesome details of the deaths of nineteen famous historical figures, including; King Tut, Pocahontas, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe and Marie Curie