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Showing 1 - 15 of 15 items
The great fire
By Jim Murphy. 1995
An account of the conflagration that levelled much of Chicago in 1871. Chronicles events from the fire's outbreak and rapid…
spread to its extinguishment by rain, as reported by survivors and in documents of the period. Examines the origins, circumstances, and official failures that contributed to the disaster. Grades 5-8. A 1996 Newbery Honor Book. c1995.The beak of the finch: a story of evolution in our time
By Jonathan Weiner. 1994
Discusses the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent more than twenty years in the Galapagos Islands researching Charles…
Darwin's finches to confront Darwin's notion of evolution as a time-suspended process. Weiner incorporates research from other scientists to assert that evolution is dynamic, involving constant, even observable, change. L.A. Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. Winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. 1994.Survivors!: true death-defying escapes
By Larry Verstraete. 2003
Think about your worst fears - being attacked by a wild animal, swept away by a killer storm, trapped in…
a wrecked car or a burning building. Here are 29 stories of real people who survived life-threatening situations. Each section includes Survival Tips that give readers essential information about what to do in dangerous circumstances. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2004 Silver Birch Award. Grades 4-7. Bestseller 2005. 2003.Interweaves an account of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America that carried a cargo of gold bullion and…
minted coins with the story of the shipwreck's discovery in 1988 by Tommy Thompson. Describes Thompson's feat of developing technology to locate and retrieve artifacts from a wooden-hulled ship in eight thousand feet of water. Winner of the 2000 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. 1998.On board the Titanic: what it was like when the great liner sank (I was there book)
By Shelley Tanaka, Ken Marschall. 1996
The story of the Titanic, once the world's largest ocean liner, as told through the experiences of two of its…
survivors. Detailed explanations about the ship, passengers, and crew are interwoven with an account of its tragic sinking in 1912. Grades 4-7. Winner of the 1997 Silver Birch Award. c1996.At the edge: daring acts in desperate times
By Larry Verstraete. 2009
A young man in Nunavut fights off a polar bear to save his friend, a Canadian peacekeeper in the Congo…
risks his own life to save those of stranded tourists, and ordinary people show extraordinary character during the Halifax Explosion, the Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, the Tiananmen Square protests, and September 11, 2001. Over twenty true-life stories about life-threatening situations and the wrenching choices made by the people facing them. Winner of the 2010 Silver Birch Award for Non-fiction. Grades 5-8. Some descriptions of violence. 2009.The shining mountain: two men on Changabang's west wall
By Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker. 1984
Recounts the endurance and determination of two British mountain climbers in making a forty-day ascent up the treacherous west wall…
of Changabang Mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. 1984.The unconscious civilization (CBC Massey lectures)
By John Ralston Saul. 1995
Saul, a Canadian essayist and novelist, claims that 20th century ideologies have promoted truisms that undermine the acquisition of knowledge…
and reason and the quest for the public good. Instead, managers and technocrats are seen as gods, passive and conformist politics abound, and only salesmanship, style and fashion are seen as meaningful. Saul argues that the average citizen must rise above a smothering bureaucracy and today's mindless devotion to "corporatism" to pursue knowledge and active, publicly interested civic engagement. Winner of the 1996 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.The boat who wouldn't float
By Farley Mowat. 1969
The armies of the night: history as a novel, the novel as history
By Norman Mailer. 1968
The story of the 1967 march on the Pentagon, skirmishes between armed guards and anti-war demonstrators, and the subsequent arrest…
of hundreds of people. The author describes his own experience as a demonstrator and also gives a historical account of the action. Winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. 1968.Rogue primate : an exploration of human domestication
By John A Livingston. 1994
In the 1970s, environmentalist John Livingston began to find serious flaws in the conventional conservation argument. He began to challenge…
the belief that the survival of undomesticated plants and animals in a world dominated by humans could be enabled through "resource conservation" managed by humans. He argues that our dependence on ideas -- in effect, our own domestication -- has cut us off from the natural world, and led us to believe that our domination over nature is itself "natural." Winner of the 1994 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.Robert, Earl of Essex
By Robert Lacey. 1971
Biography of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Follows his triumphs and disasters in the wars…
against Spain, an unsuccessful campaign in Ireland, his imprisonment and subsequent execution. 1971.Shadow warriors: inside the Special Forces
By Tom Clancy, Carl Stiner, Tony Koltz. 2002
Traces growth of Special Forces in the United States military from their conceptual origins through actual transformation into elite units.…
Clancy teams with retired general Carl Stiner, former chief of USSOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command), in discussions of specific military missions, exclusive of the 2001-2002 Afghanistan campaign. Bestseller. 2002Lifeboat 12: based on a true story
By Susan Hood. 2018
In 1940, a group of British children, their escorts, and some sailors struggle to survive in a lifeboat when the…
ship taking them to safety in Canada is torpedoed. For grades 4-7A boy at war: a novel of Pearl Harbor
By Harry Mazer. 2001
December 7, 1941. Fourteen-year-old Adam lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father is stationed on a battleship. Adam and two…
of his classmates are fishing in a rowboat when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Although wounded, Adam is conscripted to help the survivors. For grades 6-9. 2001