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Storytime in your language! Discover the magic of reading in over 40 languages; each picture books comes with an English translation to help develop multilingual reading and listening skills.
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Bringing the Toronto lakefront to life, this survey presents the stories of a largely unrecognized and forgotten legacy. This book examines the Toronto waterfront, past and present, through the lens of four nearby districts: the Scarborough Bluffs, the Beach, the Island, and the Lakeshore (New Toronto, Mimico, Humber Bay, and Long Branch). A rich photographic journey supplements the history and explores the geography and landscape of these waterfront...
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In AD 800, the Scandinavians were just barbarians in longships. Though they held sway in the north, their power meant little more than the ability to pillage and plunder, which they did to bolster their status at home. But as these Norse warriors left their strongholds to trade, raid, and settle across wide areas of Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic, their violent and predatory culture left a unique imprint on medieval history. The twist that no...
23) The Spartans: the world of the warrior-heroes of ancient Greece, from utopia to crisis and collapse
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The Spartans of ancient Greece were a powerful and unique people, a society of warrior-heroes who exemplified the heroic virtues of self-sacrifice, community endeavor, and achievement against all odds. Paul Cartledge engagingly examines the rise and fall of this singular society.
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Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's...
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Often romanticized in print and on the silver screen, real-life pirates were a brutal menace that plagued the high seas. In this book, Angus Konstam separates myth from reality, tracing the history of piracy through the centuries, from the pirates who plagued the Ancient Egyptians to the Viking raids and on to the era of privateers. He discusses the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy" and colorful characters such as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd, before...
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A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time-listed in accessible and succinct form-by one of the world's greatest scholars. From the "Hundred Best Books" to the "Ten Greatest Thinkers" to the "Ten Greatest Poets," here is a concise collection of the world's most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon-and wrote about-the most significant eras, individuals,...
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Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan M. Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel. In this book, he presents an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence. Dershowitz takes a close look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country. He accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry...
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The Riddle of the Sands is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. The novel "owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain". It was a...
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In the great wars of modern history, maritime powers have always prevailed over land-based empires, whether Habsburg, Napoleonic, Nazi or Soviet.
In contrast to the rigid hierarchies and centralization of land-based empires, those nations attaining mastery at sea have been distinguished by liberty, flexibility, and enterprise. The seventeenth-century Dutch were the first to achieve naval and trading dominance and, exploring the effects on daily...
31) Barnaby Rudge
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Fully entitled "Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," this novel was Dickens' first attempt at a historical novel. As such, it is the precursor to his more famous "A Tale of Two Cities", in which his exploration of mob violence, and especially the effect of public events on individual lives, becomes apparent. This work centers on Barnaby Rudge, a mentally simple son, and his loving mother, who are a part of the small village of Epping Forest,...
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Discusses ten important dates from recent Canadian history. These include the enactment of the War Measures Act, hockey's Summit Series, the patriation of the Constitution, the Multiculturalism Act, the École Polytechnique Massacre, victories for gay rights, Quebec's second referendum on secession, the Tragically Hip's farewell concert, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and continuing Black equality struggles.
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Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. One has only to look at history's greatest press run, which produced 6.5 billion copies of Mao Zhuxi Yulu,...
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Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs. As the scope of coffee culture...
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The invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the original sources of our numerals. Aczel has doggedly crisscrossed the...
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The most beloved and oft-adapted work by Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow follows a love triangle in the New York countryside in 1790. Sleepy Hollow, a supposedly haunted glen on the outskirts of Tarry Town, is home to a particularly ghoulish fiend - the Headless Horseman - who is said to be the specter of a fallen soldier. Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster from Connecticut, competes with local hero Abraham 'Brom Bones' Van Brunt for the...
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During the Great Famine of the 1840s, thousands of impoverished Irish immigrants, escaping from the potato crop failure, fled to Canada on what came to be known as "fever ships." As the desperate arrivals landed at Quebec City or nearby Grosse Isle, families were often torn apart. Parents died of typhus and children were put up for adoption, while lucky survivors travelled on to other destinations. Many people made their way up the St. Lawrence to...
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In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland swamps, climbed Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts....
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"A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why-and how-we play them. Checkers, Backgammon, Chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and Bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the behavioral design that make them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors,...
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