Akron Public Library

"Scientific methods, tools, and discoveries have shaped modern civilization and created the landscape we've built for ourselves on which to live, work, and play. Tyson shows how an infusion of science and rational thinking renders worldviews deeper and more informed than ever before-and exposes unfounded perspectives and unjustified emotions. With crystalline prose and an abundance of evidence, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette...

Readers can explore the traditions, culture, and history of Islam, one of the world's largest religions.

In 1995, Iowa native Bill Bryson took a motoring trip around Britain to explore that green and pleasant land. The uproarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, is one of the most acute portrayals of the United Kingdom ever written. Two decades later, Bryson-now a British citizen-set out again to rediscover his adopted country. In these pages, he follows a straight line through the island-from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath-and shows us every...

Jack and Annie look at knights, armor, and life in a castle.

Presents the history of the United States from the point of view of those who were exploited in the name of American progress.

A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with the ashes of the late world. The man can still remember the time before but not the boy. There is nothing for them except survival, and the precious last vestiges of their own humanity. At once brutal and tender, despairing and hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, The Road is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery,...

An overview of ancient Egypt that covers mummies, pyramids, religion, funerals, and daily life as well as tomb discoveries and raiding. Includes a list of museums and sources for further research

America is great for a reason. Built on principles of freedom, rugged individualism, and self-sufficiency, no country has ever accumulated more power and wealth, abused it less, or used that power more to advance the human condition. And yet, as America blossomed, leftwing radicalism and resentment festered beneath the surface, threatening to undermine democracy first in the sixties and now—more insidiously than ever—in the form of social justice...

Immersing himself in a mid-twenty-first-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty, and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's creator.

The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.