Tens of thousands of Jews were injured or killed in the pogroms of the early 1880s and those of the early 1900s. Ninety-five percent of the Jewish population was restricted to a life of poverty and starvation in the ghetto and barred from schools and universities. Ultimately, four million Jews left Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1924, three million of whom settled in America. Monumental though this mass migration was, it is even more surprising to learn that twice as many Jews decided not to leave Eastern Europe, despite the horrid conditions they endured. This puzzling statistic lends even sharper emphasis to the reasons surrounding the biggest movement of people in world history. Milton Meltzer has gathered eyewitness accounts, diaries, letters, documents, songs, maps, poems, and memoirs, weaving them into an historical narrative that details the Jews' motivation to abandon their old world and venture into a new one. It is a story that will at once educate and inspire the reader, delight and disappoint, while restoring a world practically unfathomable to today's American Jews, most of whom can find their roots in that rich and wondrous past.

Between the years 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler organized the Murder of six million Jews while the world looked on silently. But not all people stood back in fear. In every Nazioccupied Country, at every level of society, there were non-Jews who had the courage to resist. From the king of Denmark, refusing to force Jewish Danes to wear yellow stars, to the Dutch student, registering Jewish babies as Gentiles and hiding children in her home, a small number of people had the strength to reject the inhumanity they were ordered to support.

Here are their stories: thrilling, terrifying, and most of all, inspiring. For in the horror that was the Holocaust, some human decency could still shine through.

"There are no Rambo-style heroics here, just short accounts of quiet bravery. It is an inspiring testimonial."

--The San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

Notable Children's Books of 1988 (ALA)
1988 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
Best Books of 1988 (SLJ)
Best of the '80s (BL)
1988 Children's Editors' Choices (BL)
Young Adult Choices for 1988 (IRA)
1989 Teachers' Choices (IRA)
1989 Jane Addams Children's Book Award Honor Book
Children's Books of 1988 (Library of Congress)
1989 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
100 Books for Reading and Sharing 1988 (NY Public Library)

Six million-- a number impossible to visualize. Six million Jews were killed in Europe between the years 1933 and 1945. What can that number mean to us today? We can that number mean to us today? We are told never to forget the Holocaust, but how can we remember something so incomprehensible?

We can think, not of the numbers, the statistics, but of the people. For the families torn apart, watching mothers, fathers, children disappear or be slaughtered, the numbers were agonizingly comprehensible. One. Two. Three. Often more. Here are the stories of thode people, recorded in letters and diaries, and in the memories of those who survived. Seen through their eyes, the horror becomes real. We cannot deny it--and we can never forget.

‘Based on diaries, letters, songs, and history books, a moving account of Jewish suffering in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.’ —Best Books for Young Adults Committee (ALA). ‘A noted historian writes on a subject ignored or glossed over in most texts. . . . Now that youngsters are acquainted with the horrors of slavery, they are more prepared to consider the questions the Holocaust raises for us today.’ —Language Arts. ‘[An] extraordinarily fine and moving book.’ —NYT.

Notable Children's Books of 1976 (ALA)
Best of the Best Books (YA) 1970–1983 (ALA)
1976 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction
Best Books of 1976 (SLJ)
Outstanding Children's Books of 1976 (NYT)
Notable 1976 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1977 Jane Addams Award
Nominee, 1977 National Book Award for Children's Literature
IBBY International Year of the Child Special Hans Christian Andersen Honors List
Children's Books of 1976 (Library of Congress)
1976 Sidney Taylor Book Award (Association of Jewish Libraries)

In this classic novel, Josh, a teenage logger on the Ohio River, discovers his life's true mission as an abolitionist after his first encounter with a runaway slave.
Josh first attempts to spread the abolitionist message by lecturing in remote towns about the evils of slavery--but his views often ignite strong disapproval. Frustrated, he makes a more daring choice and becomes an agent of the Underground Railroad. After dozens of successful rescues, Josh is captured by Kentucky slave owners and convicted of "enticing slaves to leave their owners."
Locked away, he struggles to hold on to his ideals and sense of self. But when freedom comes sooner than he expected, Josh must decide if he will again take the kind of risks that landed him in prison.

Dorothea Lange's depression-era photographs became mythic symbols in their time and are exhibited worldwide as standards of classic photography. In this first biography of Lange, Milton Meltzer documents her development as an artist and provides a moving portrayal of a life burdened with illness and the conflicting demands of family and profession.

Slavery is not and has never been a "peculiar institution," but one that is deeply rooted in the history and economy of most countries. Although it has flourished in some periods and declined in others, human bondage for profit has never been eradicated completely.In "Slavery: A World History" renowned author Milton Meltzer traces slavery from its origins in prehistoric hunting societies; through the boom in slave trading that reached its peak in the United States with a pre-Civil War slave population of 4,000,000; through the forced labor under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet gulags; and finally to its widespread practice in many countries today, such as the debt bondage that miners endure in Brazil or the prostitution into which women are sold in Thailand. In this detailed, compassionate account, readers will learn how slavery arose, what forms it takes, what roles slaves have performed in their societies, what everyday existence is like for those enchained, and what can be done to end the degrading practice of slavery.

A humble shoemaker hears the bells ringing at Lexington and responds to a call to battle. An aide to George Washington recounts his feelings as he crosses the Delaware. A young surgeon describes in his diary the horror of an army camp, where the spread of smallpox, frostbite, and starvation are deadlier than any sword. These are the voices of the American Revolutionaries.

Most of us know about the American Revolution only from secondhand accounts of the fighting or from documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. But listen closely and you can hear the voices-those that tell the truest stories -- of men, women, and children of all races who experienced the Revolution firsthand, who planted the seeds of liberty and passionately struggled to give birth to the United States of America that we know today.