Books published by publisher Paw Prints 2008-04-28

One day in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch that lit up lower Manhattan with incandescent light and changed the way people live ever after. The electric light bulb was only one of thousands of Edison’s inventions, which include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early precursor to the movie camera. As a boy, observing a robin catch a worm and then take flight, he fed a playmate a mixture of worms and water to see if she could fly! Here’s an accessible, appealing biography with 100 black-and-white illustrations.

The classic story of an aimless teenager, a demanding father, and aspirited horse -- now a major motion picture from Twentieth Century Fox A daydreamer and a time waster, young Ken McLaughlin spends his days on his family's Wyoming ranch with his head in the clouds, surrounded by endless blue skies, wide-open spaces, and beautiful horses. To his brusque, practical father, the boy is an enigma and a disappointment. Then one day, Ken's life is filled with new purpose when he finds Flicka, a magnificent filly as wild as she is fast. Though the strong bond between boy and horse only fuels his father's disdain, Ken's growing love for his friend Flicka is changing him -- leading a once-aimless young man down the path to responsible adulthood, forging a new respect and understanding between father and son, and inspiring a fierce loyalty that nearly costs Ken his life.

In the winter of 1918, at the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, John M. Barry weaves together multiple narratives, with characters ranging from William Welch (founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School) to John D. Rockefeller and Woodrow Wilson. Ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, this crisis provides a precise and sobering model for our world as we confront AIDS, bioterrorism, and other, as yet unknown, diseases.