Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1 - 20 of 41 items
By Norman H. Finkelstein. 2024
A loving tribute to a towering figure in Jewish American history from two award-winning creators.Two-time National Jewish Book Award winner…
Norman H. Finkelstein and Sydney Taylor Award winner Vesper Stamper have teamed up to tell the story of Abraham Cahan, the founder and longtime editor of the Yiddish language newspaper the Forverts (the Forward), which, in its heyday, was one of the largest newspapers in the United States. As the saying went: "What's a home without the Forverts?"From explaining voting rights to the importance of public health measures to everyday questions like how to play baseball, Cahan improved the lives of countless newly arrived Jewish immigrants who wanted to feel at home in a new, strange land. He also published celebrated writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and created the iconic advice column the Bintel Brief for homesick readers.Back matter includes a bibliography, a time line, more info on Cahan's life and the Yiddish language, and a note on the author's personal connection to the Forverts.By Hollis Robbins, Henry Louis Gates Jr.. 2017
A landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout the tumultuous nineteenth century. Named…
one of NPR's Best Books of 2017. The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women&’s suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.By Jeanne Walker Harvey. 2011
As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, Romare Bearden listened to his great-grandmother's Cherokee stories and heard the…
whistle of the train that took his people to the North people who wanted to be free. When Romare and his family, faced with Jim Crow laws, boarded that same train, he watched out the window as the world whizzed by. Later he captured those scenes in a famous painting, Watching the Good Trains Go By. Using that painting as inspiration and creating a text influenced by the blues and jazz that Bearden loved, Jeanne Walker Harvey tells the story of Bearden's children by describing the patchwork of daily southern life that Romare saw out the train's window and the story of his arrival in shimmering New York City. Artists and critics today praise Bearden's collages for their visual metaphors honoring his past, African American culture, and the human experience. 2011. For grades K-3By Nina Revoyr. 2019
"Revoyr is gifted in her ability to deal with complex ideas like racism, class conflict, and sexuality without sacrificing the…
truth of her narrative. Furthermore, like the most adroit novelists, Revoyr specializes in reversal. All of her books are filled with suspense and sudden surprises that take the stories in unexpected directions...As much as Nina Revoyr herself is a student of history, she's also one of our best teachers."--Los Angeles Review of Books"Revoyr's latest noir tells a story that's somewhere between Sunset Boulevard and the darker regions of The Great Gatsby...Revoyr is a subtle observer of human foibles and social structures, and the result is one of the most insightful, and the most entertaining books of the year."--Literary Hub, one of Lit Hub's 50 Favorite Books of 2019"A Student of History is full of research, detail, lush descriptions, and visual place-setting. [Revoyr's] a fiction writer with an eye for reality set in a dream-like world, often in her home city of Los Angeles."--The Rumpus"Any Nina Revoyr novel is a cause for celebration, and her latest, A Student of History, is assured and marvelous, an absorbing rags among riches tale about a broke USC grad student who finds himself swept off his feet by Los Angeles's insular, powerful .01% class. It's a contemporary novel that feels like an instant classic, with the wry tragedy of The House of Mirth, the sinister glamour of Sunset Boulevard, and a fresh, original point of view."--CrimeReads"With a nod to Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, Rick Nagano is Nick Carraway and young Pip rolled into one...Lambda Award–winner Revoyr focuses on the impact of race in the construct of class and society, and how there are some doors that will always remain closed."--The Advocate"Nina Revyor's new novel, A Student of History, continues the tradition of the Los Angeles oil novel, but steers it in a new direction."--Rain Taxi Review of Books"With her two Walter Mosley-like gifts--impeccable narrative pacing and masterful command of Los Angeles' intricate, evolving dynamics of race and class--Nina Revoyr's LA novels convincingly capture the lifespan of Los Angeles as a major city, none more gracefully than A Student of History."--New York Journal of BooksRick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on his South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. W--, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. But as he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W--, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings.Putting aside his half-finished dissertation, Rick sets up office in Mrs. W--'s grand Bel Air mansion and begins to transcribe her journals--which document an old Los Angeles not described in his history books. He also accompanies Mrs. W-- to venues frequented by the descendants of the land and oil barons who built the city. One evening, at an event, he meets Fiona Morgan--the elegant scion of an old steel family--who takes an interest in his studies. Irresistibly drawn to Fiona, he agrees to help her with a project of questionable merit in the hopes he'll win her favor.A Student of History explores both the beginnings of Los Angeles and the present-day dynamics of race and class. It offers a window into the usually hidden world of high society, and the influence of historic families on current events. Like Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, it features, in Rick Nagano, a young man of modest means who is navigating a world where he doesn't belong.By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. 1987
Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in history. At…
the heart of the story is a cross-cultural friendship between Hope-Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society and Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief. It challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and claims for women their rightful place in history. Adult. UnratedBy Leah Henderson, Floyd Cooper. 2021
Today is a special day. Eli knows it's important if he's allowed to miss one second of school, his "hard-earned…
right." Inspired by true events and told through the eyes of a young boy, this is the deeply moving story about what is regarded as the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865. Eli dresses up in his best clothes, Mama gathers the mayflowers, Papa straightens his hat, and together they join the crowds filling the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, with bouquets, crosses, and wreaths. Abolitionists, missionaries, teachers, military officers, and a sea of faces Black, Brown, and White, they march as one and sing for all those who gave their lives fighting for freedom during the Civil War. With poignant prose and celebratory, powerful illustrations, A Day for Rememberin' shines light on the little-known history of this important holiday and reminds us never to forget the people who put their lives on the line for their country. For grades K-3By Elizabeth Cobbs. 2016
A New York Times Bestseller and one of the best historical fiction books of 2016 and 2017!“A juicy answer to…
Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton…” --CosmopolitanSet against the dramatic backdrop of the American Revolution, and featuring a cast of legendary characters, The Hamilton Affair tells the sweeping, tumultuous, true story of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, from passionate and tender beginnings of their romance to his fateful duel on the banks of the Hudson River.Hamilton was a bastard and orphan, raised in the Caribbean and desperate for legitimacy, who became one of the American Revolution's most dashing--and improbable--heroes. Admired by George Washington, scorned by Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton was a lightning rod: the most controversial leader of the new nation. Elizabeth was the wealthy, beautiful, adventurous daughter of the respectable Schuyler clan--and a pioneering advocate for women. Together, the unlikely couple braved the dangers of war, the perils of seduction, the anguish of infidelity, and the scourge of partisanship that menaced their family and the country itself.With flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and epic scope, The Hamilton Affair tells a story of love forged in revolution and tested by the bitter strife of young America, and will take its place among the greatest novels of American history ever written.By Ganeshram Ramin. 2018
Philadelphia 1793. Hercules, President George Washington’s chef, is a fixture on the Philadelphia scene. He is famous for both his…
culinary prowess and for ruling his kitchen like a commanding general. He has his run of the city and earns twice the salary of an average American workingman. He wears beautiful clothes and attends the theater. But while valued by the Washingtons for his prowess in the kitchen and rewarded far over and above even white servants, Hercules is enslaved in a city where most black Americans are free. Even while he masterfully manages his kitchen and the lives of those in and around it, Hercules harbors secrets-- including the fact that he is learning to read and that he is involved in a dangerous affair with Thelma, a mixed-race woman, who, passing as white, works as a companion to the daughter of one of Philadelphia's most prestigious families. Eventually Hercules’ carefully crafted intrigues fall apart and he finds himself trapped by his circumstance and the will of George Washington. Based on actual historical events and people, The General's Cook, will thrill fans of The Hamilton Affair, as they follow Hercules' precarious and terrifying bid for freedom.By John Okada. 1981
A 25-year-old man returns home to Seattle after spending two years in an internment camp for being Japanese-American, and another…
two years in prison for refusing to join the United States Army during World War II. 1976By Susan Sinnott. 1991
Outlines the lives of Hispanics who figure prominently in United States history. The book is divided into five parts titled…
"An Age of Exploration," "Early Hispanic America," "America from Sea to Sea," "The Twentieth Century," and "Looking toward the Twenty-first Century." Included are profiles of Hernando de Soto, Diego de Vargas, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Desi Arnaz, Rita Moreno, and Roberto Clemente. For grades 5-8 and older readersBy Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Jeanne Houston, James D. Houston. 1974
By James Haskins, Jim Haskins. 1998
Examines the gradual acceptance of African American soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Includes excerpts…
from letters, documented accounts, and government transcripts. The last chapter describes how historians for many years ignored the role of African American troops in the war. For grades 5-8By Mildred D Taylor, Mildred D. Taylor, Max Ginsburg. 2001
Mississippi, post-Civil War. Paul-Edward, the son of a white plantation owner and a slave of African-Indian heritage, follows his dream…
of owning his own land through hard work and determination. Prequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (DB 50326), the story of Paul-Edward's granddaughter, Cassie Logan. For grades 6-9. 2001By Nancy Holder. 2000
Hawaii, 1941. Bekah Martin meets Navy Ensign Scott DeAngelo while returning to her native Hawaii, falling in love although she…
is already engaged to another. When Bekah is visiting Scott on his ship December 7, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. For junior and senior high readers. 2000By Carole Boston Weatherford, R. Gregory Christie. 2016
The story in rhyme of Congo Square--the one place that slaves could congregate in New Orleans on Sundays to celebrate…
their heritage by dancing and sharing music together. For grades K-3By Adam Gamble, Mark Jasper, Joe Veno. 2013
Introduces well-known features of Missouri, including The St. Louis Arch, The Kansas City Aquarium, the Mark Twain home in Hannibal,…
the Lake of the Ozarks, the Ozark Mountains, and Silver Dollar City. For preschool-grade 2By Gloria Whelan, Gijsbert Van Frankenhuyzen. 2006
Although it will mean that their father can no longer make a living running a ferry boat, thirteen-year-old Mark and…
his brother Luke are excited about the building of a five-mile bridge across the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan in 1957. A 2007 Michigan Notable book. For grades 2-4. 2006By Francisco Jiménez. 2015
Jiménez came to California with his emigrant Mexican family, and worked for many years in the fields alongside them. Here,…
he recounts his life from when he arrives in NY City to begin graduate work at Columbia University in the late 1960s. It was a turbulent, political time, and he missed his girlfriend and family in California. Eventually he became a professor at Santa Clara University in 1973By Leslie Kimmelman, Adam Gustavson. 2009
A brief, fictionalized account of what life was like for Theodore Roosevelt during his political career, with his oldest daughter,…
Alice, a strong-willed and somewhat wild young woman, who loved to do things that shocked the public, even when she lived in the White House. For grades 2-4By Carrie Hartman, Karlyn Coleman, K. R. Coleman. 2017
Minnesotans are a hardy lot, undaunted by snow and cold. Armed with wool and fleece, they embrace the winter season…
and all the opportunities for adventure, activity, and celebration it brings. For preschool-grade 2