Simple text and photographs present the life of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the phonograph, lightbulb, and movies with sound.

"The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the lightbulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity. The lightbulb became a catalyst for the nation's...

"A forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro, the Father of Impressionism."-- Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Instead she is married off to a widower with three children to save her father's business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from...

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Morris comes a revelatory new biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history. Thomas Alva Edison's invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions, not including those he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine. Morris portrays the unknown...

Offers a reassessment of the life, image, and career of Thomas Jefferson, examining his complex personality, controversies about the man and his beliefs, and his accomplishments.

Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defense of man's inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But here, polemicist and commentator...

Odd Thomas confronts deadly adversaries in a decaying estate.