Scott Brick
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.6 - AR Pts: 20
Lexile measure
1190L
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
In the summer of 1776, Washington's army in Brooklyn and New York City faced one of the largest invading forces ever assembled by the British Empire. After suffering a series of devastating defeats, Washington's vulnerable and dejected troops were forced to evacuate the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Three weeks later, however, near the Canadian border, one of his favorite and most talented generals accomplished a tactical miracle by stalling the...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 10.2 - AR Pts: 26
Language
English
Description
Moss, the investigative reporter behind the "pink slime" expose, traces the rise of the processed food industry over the last five decades. He describes how the addictive additives of salt, sugar, and fat have created a nation of "heavy users:" the companies' term for their most ardent customers. Moss also reveals the deliberate corporate practices--from chemical manipulation of the additives to marketing campaigns adapted from tobacco companies--that...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 10 - AR Pts: 23
Lexile measure
1350L
Language
English
Description
Inside isolated American communities, some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy--defying both civil authorities, and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City. At the core of Krakauer's book are the brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a woman and her baby daughter. Meticulously researching this double murder, Krakauer uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America's fastest growing religion,...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.2 - AR Pts: 23
Lexile measure
1170L
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Tells the parallel stories of Daniel Burnham, the main architect of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and serial killer Henry H. Holmes, discussing the challenges Burnham faced in creating the hugely successful White City, and looking at how Holmes used the opportunities afforded by the fair to lure victims to their deaths.
Author
Pub. Date
2010.
Language
English
Description
In "Washington : a Life" celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation, dashing forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man, and revealing an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people.
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.8 - AR Pts: 14
Lexile measure
1210L
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.7 - AR Pts: 24
Lexile measure
1300L
Language
English
Description
Irrepressible individualist and iconoclast Pat Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract in May 2002 to enlist in the United States Army. Deeply troubled by 9/11, he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in Afghanistan. Though obvious to most on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered...
9) Lucky Man
Author
Language
English
Description
A memoir in which actor Michael J. Fox shares the story of his life, discussing his childhood in Canada, his career in show business, his marriage and family, and his struggle with Parkinson's disease.
Author
Language
English
Description
Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight, or something organic? Or perhaps something we grew ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Michael Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century may determine our survival...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Ron Chernow tells the story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow's biography argues that the political and economic greatness of today's America is the result of Hamilton's countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. Chernow here recounts...
Author
Lexile measure
1390L
Language
English
Description
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of food journalist Pollan's thesis. Humans used to know how to eat well, he argues, but the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real."...
14) In cold blood
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.1 - AR Pts: 21
Language
English
Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it.
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent...
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A memoir by the highest-ranking covert warrior to lift the veil of secrecy and offer a glimpse into the shadow wars that America has fought since the Vietnam Era. Enrique Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled their war-torn home for the hope of a better life in America. Fifty years later, the Cuban refugee retired from the Central...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In these pages, acclaimed journalist Jon Krakauer investigates a spate of campus rapes that occurred in Missoula over a four-year period. Taking the town as a case study for a crime that is sadly prevalent throughout the nation, Krakauer documents the experiences of five victims: their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the skepticism directed at them by police, prosecutors, and the public, their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them....
Author
Language
English
Description
"From the New York Times bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy, The Nazi Conspiracy tells the little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of the second World War. In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted one thing: a face-to-face meeting with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This meeting of the...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on President Lincoln. Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"In the fall of 1780, after five frustrating years of war, George Washington had come to realize that the only way to defeat the British Empire was with the help of the French navy. But as he had learned after two years of trying, coordinating his army's movements with those of a fleet of warships based thousands of miles away was next to impossible. And then, on September 5, 1781, the impossible happened. Recognized today as one of the most important...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From master storyteller and historian H.W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's...