"It takes truly special athletes to be superstars, whether they're catching touchdowns, scoring goals, or slamming home acrobatic dunks. The Sport Superstars series takes a look at some of these legendary athletes, their origin stories, and how they have influenced their sport."--Page 4 of cover

Out of the depths of the Great Depression comes the astonishing tale of nine working-class boys from the American West who at the 1936 Olympics showed the world what true grit really meant. With rowers who were the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington's eight-oar crew was never expected to defeat the elite East Coast teams, yet they did, going on to shock the world by challenging the German boat rowing for Adolf...

A leader of the American art movement known as Pop, short for "popular culture," Warhol changed the way we think of art. Assisted by photographs taken of Warhol throughout his life, and examples of his early drawings and best-known works, author Rubin traces his rise from poverty to wealth, and from obscurity to fame. After attending art school in Pittsburgh, Warhol started a career as a commercial artist in New York, and quickly won acclaim for his...

A fact-filled historical examination of Jesus that considers the political and cultural factors that contributed to his trial, conviction and crucifixion. Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly two thousand years after this controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. The author takes readers inside Jesus's life, recounting the seismic political...

Do you remember the best summer of your life? New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and Marty Garrett arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany & Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor. Hart takes us back to the magical time when she and Marty rubbed shoulders with the rich...

"On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre 'Tania'. The weird turns of the tale are truly astonishing...

"When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed a property listing for a grand estate that had been unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled into one of the most surprising American stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Empty Mansions is a rich tale of wealth and loss, complete with copper barons, Gilded Age opulence, and backdoor politics. At its heart is a reclusive 104-year-old heiress named Huguette Clark. Dedman...

Profiles ten kings that changed the course of history, including Peter the Great, and Hammurabi, ruler of the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia.