Books with author Michael Burgan

Its 1950 and the Communist country of North Korea has invaded its neighboring country of South Korea. The United Nations has stepped in to help South Korea by providing weapons and soldiers. Nearly all of these soldiers come from the United States. Will you: Serve as a pilot in Korea with the U.S. Marine Corps? Lie about your age to enlist as a 16 year old member of the U.S. military reserves? Join in the fight for your country as a young South Korean man? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to survival or to death.

The world's great powers have all been swept up in the first global war. Spying on the enemy can provide information that might be useful for your country’s war effort. The work is dangerous but exciting. Will you: *Offer your services to the German intelligence agency as an English-speaking spy? *Work as an Allied female spy in German-occupied Belgium? *Be sent to Russia as a member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service? You Choose offers multiple perspectives on history, supporting Common Core reading standards and providing readers a front-row seat to the past.

Air raid! The world's great powers are at war again. This is the Second World War, but it is history's first war in which airplanes play a major role. You want to fly and you want to fight. Will you: Fly with the Royal Air Force as a British pilot and fight in the Battle of Britain? Dogfight as an American fighter pilot over the Pacific Ocean? Join the Tuskegee Airmen and be one of the first African-American aviators in the U.S. military?

War is a time of secrets. Advances in technology during the height of World War II provide new methods for spies to keep secrets, steal information, and destroy enemy plans. You're about to go under cover. Will you: Become a resistance fighter in Denmark, revealing Germany's false claims of protection? Work as a double cross agent, pledging loyalty to one country but actually spying for another? Join the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, shuttling weapons to the Allies and sabotaging German transportation?

Gladiators, many of them slaves, entertained Roman audiences by fighting with tridents and swords in huge stadiums. Their fights often were to the death. Will you: Fight at the side of Spartacus during a violent gladiator rebellion? Leave your home and family to train at a gladiator school in Pompeii? Try to earn your freedom as a champion gladiator at the Roman Amphitheater?

Jesse Owens’ gold-medal winning feats at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin struck a mighty propaganda blow against Adolf Hitler. The Nazi leader had planned to use the German games as a showcase of supposed Aryan superiority. Instead there was American black athlete Owens on the podium being photographed by Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. In addition, Owens would figure prominently in the groundbreaking film Olympia by Hitler’s favorite director Leni Riefenstahl. Photo and film captured Owens’ stunning success and revealed how wrong Hitler was in his beliefs.

You're one of millions of immigrants leaving your home in the early 1900s to move to the United States. You're searching for a better life. Ellis Island, near New York City, is your first stop in your search for opportunity and freedom. Officials on the island have been processing immigrants there for decades, but not everyone gets through. If you pass the tests, you're on your way to a new life in the United States. If you don't, you may find yourself being sent back to your homeland. What path will you take? Will you: Be a Jewish youth leaving the violence of Russia in hopes of a better life in America? Be an Italian teen who lands at Ellis Island during World War I? A German immigrant who faces deportation? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to opportunity, to wealth, to poverty, or even to death.

Its 1950 and the Communist country of North Korea has invaded its neighboring country of South Korea. The United Nations has stepped in to help South Korea by providing weapons and soldiers. Nearly all of these soldiers come from the United States. Will you: Serve as a pilot in Korea with the U.S. Marine Corps? Lie about your age to enlist as a 16 year old member of the U.S. military reserves? Join in the fight for your country as a young South Korean man? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to survival or to death.

In the 1930s, Americans faced one of the biggest crises ever to hit the country. During the Great Depression, the stock market crash caused banks to close and many companies to go out of business. Millions of people lost their jobs and homes during a time when the government wasn’t equipped to pick up the pieces. Will you: March on Washington, D.C., as a veteran member of the Bonus Army? Leave your home to find a better life by riding the rails? Help rebuild the country as a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps?