Missionaries from the West came with the message of Jesus Christ, but it was the men and women saved from cannibalism, the young boys who herded goats and who carted water who brought the Good News even farther to more and more villages and homesteads in Africa. Sixteen true stories from the life of Margaret Nicholl Laird display the power of God in the salvation of people who had never heard the Good News.

    For thousands of years, humans believed that Earth was at the center of the Universe, but all of that changed in the 17th century. Astronomers like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton proposed the unthinkable theory that Earth and the other planets actually revolved around the Sun. This engaging book chronicles the beginning of the modern age of astronomy, then follows later discoveries, including NASA's current missions in space.

    It is also one of history’s most mysterious and compelling works of art. This haunting stitched account of the battle that redrew the map of medieval Europe has inspired dreams of theft, waves of nationalism, visions of limitless power, and esthetic rapture. In his fascinating new book, Yale professor R. Howard Bloch reveals the history, the hidden meaning, the deep beauty, and the enduring allure of this astonishing piece of cloth.Bloch opens with a gripping account of the event that inspired the Tapestry: the swift, bloody Battle of Hastings, in which the Norman bastard William defeated the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, and laid claim to England under his new title, William the Conqueror. But to truly understand the connection between battle and embroidery, one must retrace the web of international intrigue and scandal that climaxed at Hastings. Bloch demonstrates how, with astonishing intimacy and immediacy, the artisans who fashioned this work of textile art brought to life a moment that changed the course of British culture and history. Every age has cherished the Tapestry for different reasons and read new meaning into its enigmatic words and images. French nationalists in the mid-nineteenth century, fired by Tapestry’s evocation of military glory, unearthed the lost French epic “The Song of Roland,” which Norman troops sang as they marched to victory in 1066. As the Nazis tightened their grip on Europe, Hitler sent a team to France to study the Tapestry, decode its Nordic elements, and, at the end of the war, with Paris under siege, bring the precious cloth to Berlin. The richest horde of buried Anglo-Saxon treasure, the matchless beauty of Byzantine silk, Aesop’s strange fable “The Swallow and the Linseed,” the colony that Anglo-Saxon nobles founded in the Middle East following their defeat at Hastings–all are brilliantly woven into Bloch’s riveting narrative.Seamlessly integrating Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Byzantine elements, the Bayeux Tapestry ranks with Chartres and the Tower of London as a crowning achievement of medieval Europe. And yet, more than a work of art, the Tapestry served as the suture that bound up the wounds of 1066. Enhanced by a stunning full-color insert that includes reproductions of the complete Tapestry, A Needle in the Right Hand of God will stand with The Professor and the Madman and How the Irish Saved Civilization as a triumph of popular history.From the Hardcover edition.

    In true National Geographic style, this book excites young people about their world and everything in it, so it's no surprise that the 2012 edition landed at #3 on the New York Times best seller list! The 2014 Almanac features fun information, browsable features, and helpful reference on subjects including technology, countries, presidents, animals, weather, funny roadside attractions, outer space, green tips, and natural disasters, just for starters. Chapters include Amazing Animals, Going Green, Geography Rocks, Super Science, Wonders of Nature, Awesome Adventure, Culture Connection, History Happens, and an interactive Fun and Games chapter. Exciting changes for 2014 include:  • Forty percent NEW content, including photos and articles  • Mobile media features in every chapter that readers can download to an iPod Touch or smart phone, including National Geographic animal videos, photo galleries, and interactive games • A brand new special section on cute animals • A fully revamped continents of the world section • A special Fun and Games chapter featuring all-new jokes, games, and comics, featuring funny animal photos and colorful illustrations • A fully updated "Your World" section, which opens the Almanac, will include all-new, up-to-the-moment content • All-new fun facts, activities, games, and crafts • More than 500 photographs, including incredible gorgeous new photo spreads featuring animals, adventure, nature, and more  • 8 Homework Help sections • All facts, figures, and reference material will be updated • And much more...

    then, by golly, stick a tiara on your head and go teach something!" Do you wish that you had the chance to sit down with a seasoned homeschooling veteran over a cup of tea and ask every question that comes to mind? Mother of seven and twelve year homeschooling veteran Rebecca Frech is the common-sense voice of experience and reassurance that you've been hoping to find. Teaching in Your Tiara is a soup-to-nuts homeschooling book that walks you through the first years - deciding that home education is right for your family, choosing the right curriculum, understanding learning styles, not raising socially awkward kids, maintaining your own identity, and more. Whether you're the parent who's already committed to homeschooling or you're just dipping your toe into the pool of consideration, this book is for you! Rebecca's logic, honesty, and humor will leave you both amused and well-informed about the realities of homeschooling and what it could mean for your family.

    In this companion to the film, which includes photographs from the movie set and recipes, the dog Winn-Dixie describes how he met ten-year-old India Opal Buloni and all the good things that happened to them as a result.

    This classic reprint of Corporal Alvin York's journal reveals him as a humble Christian who risked his life in the First World War and was later awarded the congessional Medal of Honor for his brav

    His mother packs up their home in Cape Town and takes him to a tiny backwater town in the semi-desert Karoo region, where she withdraws into her painting. Douglas, a city kid in an insular community, makes only two friends: a beautiful girl named Marika, with her adventurous spirit and tyrannical father; and an old garage worker named Moses, with his junkyard Volvo and dreams of driving away to Cape Town.Against the backdrop of the bitter conflict of 1970s South Africa, Douglas develops a clearer insight into himself and his place in the world, a world where dreams and reality meet in a surprising twist. Blazing with color and light, Karoo Boy offers a sensuous and lyrical evocation of South Africa that leaves a lasting impression and ultimately ends on a note of hope.

    A story of Venice in the 14th century, a period when her strength and splendor were put to the severest tests.

    For young Mary O'Shea, the hardest change is the departure of her father, who leaves Mackinac to join the American Army. With her sister and brother, Mary must tend the farm, deal with the hardships of British occupation, and hope for the safe return of their father.

    Find out who was killed for changing the calendar, make your own crazy clock, meet the tortured time geniuses and check out your chances of a time-travel trip. With fantastic fact files and quirky quizzes and crazy cartoons, The Terrible Truth about Time is seconds to none!

    It had an illustration that captivated him–a diagram showing Earth’s interior as it would look if you cut into it with a large knife and removed about a quarter of its bulk. The idea of lots of startled cars and people falling off the edge of that sudden cliff (and 4,000 miles is a pretty long way to fall) was what grabbed him in the beginning, but gradually his attention turned to what the picture was trying to teach him: namely that Earth’s interior is made up of several different layers of materials, and at the very centre is a glowing sphere of iron and nickel, as hot as the Sun’s surface, according to the caption. And he very clearly remembers thinking: “How do they know that?”Bill’s storytelling skill makes the “How?” and, just as importantly, the “Who?” of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for all ages. He covers the wonder and mystery of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, and the mind-boggling fact that, somehow, the universe exists and against all odds, life came to be on this wondrous planet we call home.

    As ruler of the largest empire in human history, he was as respected as he was feared. Learn more about the man and the legend in Who Was Genghis Khan?

    Hazen writes of how the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere—of rocks and living matter—has shaped our planet into the only one of its kind in the Solar System, if not the entire cosmos.With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s passion for the ground beneath our feet, Hazen explains how changes on an atomic level translate into dramatic shifts in Earth’s makeup over its 4.567 billion year existence. He calls upon a flurry of recent discoveries to portray our planet’s many iterations in vivid detail. Through his theory of “co-evolution,” we learn how reactions between organic molecules and rock crystals may have generated Earth’s first organisms, which in turn are responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties on the planet.The Story of Earth is also the story of the pioneering men and women behind the sciences. Readers will meet black-market meteorite hawkers of the Sahara Desert, the gun-toting Feds who guarded the Apollo missions’ lunar dust, and the World War II Navy officer whose super-pressurized “bomb”—recycled from military hardware—first simulated the molten rock of Earth’s mantle. As a mentor to a new generation of scientists, Hazen introduces the intrepid young explorers whose dispatches from Earth’s harshest landscapes will revolutionize geology.

    500 to 1700, the medieval kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay grew rich on the gold, salt, and slave trade that stretched across Africa. Scraping away hundreds of years of ignorance, prejudice, and mythology, award-winnnig authors Patricia and Fredrick McKissack reveal the glory of these forgotten empires while inviting us to share in the inspiring process of historical recovery that is taking place today.