Kirjahaku

The inspirational story of three international runners attempting to achieve what no one had managed – to break the four-minute mile barrier. It was the ultimate test of endurance, and the human drama that unfolded is told here for the first time. In sport, running the four-minute mile was the elusive Holy Grail, considered by most to be beyond the limits of human endeavour. Then in late 1952, shortly after the Helsinki Olympics, three men set out to challenge the record books: Roger Bannister, the Oxford medical student, the great British hero who epitomised the ideal of the amateur athlete; John Landy, the tireless Australian, the romantic who trained night and day in search of perfection; and the American Wes Santee, son of a Kansas ranch hand, a natural runner and the quickest of the three ('I was just born to run fast'). Three men, each of contrasting character, competing thousands of miles apart, but all with the same valedictory goal. The Perfect Mile is the stirring account of their quest for sporting martyrdom, charting their journey through triumph and failure, culminating in the moment when Bannister broke the record in a monumental run at the Iffley Road cinder track in Oxford in May 1954. It was a feat that became one of the most celebrated in the history of British sport. Far from bringing an end to the rivalry, this watershed moment turned out to be merely the prelude to a final climactic battle three months later – the ultimate head-to-head between Bannister and Landy in what was dubbed ‘the mile of the century’ at the Vancouver Empire Games. Bascomb provides a fascinating account of what happened and an invaluable insight into the motivations and characters of three amazing achievers.

That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory. But at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of "cool" was brewing. A physics teacher with a dream - the first public high-school teacher ever to win a MacArthur Genius Award -- had rounded up a band of high-I.Q. students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work. If you asked these brainiacs what the stakes were that first week of their project, they'd have told you it was all about winning a robotics competition - building the ultimate robot and prevailing in a machine-to-machine contest in front of 25,000 screaming fans at Atlanta's Georgia Dome. But for their mentor, Amir Abo-Shaeer, much more hung in the balance. The fact was, Amir had in mind a different vision for education, one based not on rote learning -- on absorbing facts and figures -- but on active creation. In his mind's eye, he saw an even more robust academy within Dos Pueblos that would make science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) cool again, and he knew he was poised on the edge of making that dream a reality. All he needed to get the necessary funding was one flashy win - a triumph that would firmly put his Engineering Academy at Dos Pueblos on the map. He imagined that one day there would be a nation filled with such academies, and a new popular veneration for STEM - a "new cool" - that would return America to its former innovative glory. It was a dream shared by Dean Kamen, a modern-day inventing wizard - often-called "the Edison of his time" - who'd concocted the very same FIRST Robotics Competition that had lured the kids at Dos Pueblos. Kamen had created FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) nearly twenty years prior. And now, with a participant alumni base approaching a million strong, he felt that awareness was about to hit critical mass. But before the Dos Pueblos D'Penguineers could do their part in bringing a new cool to America, they'd have to vanquish an intimidating lineup of "super-teams"- high-school technology goliaths that hailed from engineering hot spots such as Silicon Valley, Massachusetts' Route 128 technology corridor, and Michigan's auto-design belt. Some of these teams were so good that winning wasn't just hoped for every year, it was expected. In The New Cool, Neal Bascomb manages to make even those who know little about - or are vaguely suspicious of - technology care passionately about a team of kids questing after a different kind of glory. In these kids' heartaches and headaches - and yes, high-five triumphs -- we glimpse the path not just to a new way of educating our youth but of honoring the crucial skills a society needs to prosper. A new cool.

"Bascomb has unearthed a remarkable piece of hidden history, and told it perfectly. The story brims with adventure, suspense, daring, and heroism." --David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon Neal Bascomb, New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous--and ingenious--breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp. In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots might avoid death, only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of prison camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone officers. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave. Desperate to break out of "Hellminden" and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watchtowers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150-mile dash through enemy-occupied territory toward free Holland. Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War.

Winner of the Motor Press Guild Best Book of the Year Award & Dean Batchelor Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism For fans of The Boys in the Boat and In the Garden of Beasts, a pulse-pounding tale of triumph by an improbable team of upstarts over Hitler's fearsome Silver Arrows during the golden age of auto racing As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, three unlikely heroes--a driver banned from the best European teams because of his Jewish heritage, the owner of a faltering automaker company, and the adventurous daughter of an American multimillionaire--banded together to challenge Hitler's dominance at the Grand Prix, the apex of motorsport. Bringing to life this glamorous era and the sport that defined it, Faster chronicles one of the most inspiring, death-defying upsets of all time: a symbolic blow against the Nazis during history's darkest hour.

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Hunting Eichmann and The Perfect Mile, a World War II spy adventure set in Norway that draws on top-secret documents and memoirs of the saboteurs.In 1942, the Nazis were racing to complete the first atomic bomb. All they needed was a single, incredibly rare ingredient: heavy water, which was produced solely at Norway's Vemork plant. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers pushed production into overdrive. If the Allies could not destroy the plant, they feared the Nazis would soon be in possession of the most dangerous weapon the world had ever seen. But how would the Allied forces reach the castle fortress, set on a precipitous gorge in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth? Based on a trove of top-secret documents and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is an arresting chronicle of a brilliant scientist, a band of spies on skis, perilous survival in the wild, Gestapo manhunts, and a last-minute operation that would alter the course of the war. "Riveting and poignant . . . The Winter Fortress metamorphoses from engrossing history into a smashing thriller . . . Mr. Bascomb's research and, especially, his storytelling skills are first-rate." -- Wall Street Journal

A thrilling spy mission, a moving Holocaust story, and a first-class work of narrative nonfiction. This Sydney Taylor Book Award- and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award-winning story of Eichmann's capture is now a major motion picture starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley, Operation Finale In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis' Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century's most important trials -- one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination. This is the thrilling and fascinating story of what happened between these two events. Illustrated with powerful photos throughout, impeccably researched, and told with powerful precision, THE NAZI HUNTERS is a can't-miss work of narrative nonfiction for middle-grade and YA readers.

A thrilling spy mission, a moving Holocaust story, and a first-class work of narrative nonfiction.This Sydney Taylor Book Award- and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award-winning story of Eichmann's capture is now a major motion picture starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley, Operation Finale In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis' Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century's most important trials -- one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination.This is the thrilling and fascinating story of what happened between these two events. Illustrated with powerful photos throughout, impeccably researched, and told with powerful precision, THE NAZI HUNTERS is a can't-miss work of narrative nonfiction for middle-grade and YA readers.

A stunning adventure involving Nazis, nukes, fighting, failure, and everyday heroes, from the author of the award-winning The Nazi Hunters.Neal Bascomb delivers another nail-biting work of nonfiction for young adults in this incredible true story of spies and survival.The invasion begins at night, with German cruisers slipping into harbor, and soon the Nazis occupy all of Norway. They station soldiers throughout the country. They institute martial rule. And at Vemork, an industrial fortress high above a dizzying gorge, they gain access to an essential ingredient for the weapon that could end World War II: Hitler's very own nuclear bomb.When the Allies discover the plans for the bomb, they agree Vemork must be destroyed. But after a British operation fails to stop the Nazis' deadly designs, the task falls to a band of young Norwegian commandos. Armed with little more than skis, explosives, and great courage, they will survive months in the snowy wilderness, elude a huge manhunt, and execute two dangerous missions. The result? The greatest act of sabotage in all of World War II.

New York Times best-selling author Neal Bascomb's Hunting Eichmann is the first complete narrative of the pursuit and capture of SS Nazi officer and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann."A fantastic true spy story."--Associated PressWhen the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich, Adolf Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished. Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time). The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you'd find in great spy fiction. Includes Mossad's Rare Surveillance Photographs

A stirring account of athleticism in the face of adversity follows the remarkable journey of three young men--John Landy, Wes Santee, and Roger Bannister--who suffered defeat at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 but nevertheless vowed to break the four-minute mile, training tirelessly to accomplish their goal. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Roaring Twenties in New York was a time of exuberant ambition, free-flowing optimism, an explosion of artistic expression in the age of Prohibition. New York was the city that embodied the spirit and strength of a newly powerful America. In 1924, in the vibrant heart of Manhattan, a fierce rivalry was born. Two architects, William Van Alen and Craig Severance (former friends and successful partners, but now bitter adversaries), set out to imprint their individual marks on the greatest canvas in the world--the rapidly evolving skyline of New York City. Each man desired to build the city's tallest building, or 'skyscraper.' Each would stop at nothing to outdo his rival. Van Alen was a creative genius who envisioned a bold, contemporary building that would move beyond the tired architecture of the previous century. By a stroke of good fortune he found a larger-than-life patron in automobile magnate Walter Chrysler, and they set out to build the legendary Chrysler building. Severance, by comparison, was a brilliant businessman, and he tapped his circle of downtown, old-money investors to begin construction on the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street. From ground-breaking to bricklaying, Van Alen and Severance fought a cunning duel of wills. Each man was forced to revamp his architectural design in an attempt to push higher, to overcome his rival in mid-construction, as the structures rose, floor by floor, in record time. Yet just as the battle was underway, a third party entered the arena and announced plans to build an even larger building. This project would be overseen by one of Chrysler's principal rivals--a representative of the General Motors group--and the building ultimately became known as The Empire State Building. Infused with narrative thrills and perfectly rendered historical and engineering detail, " Higher" brings to life a sensational episode in American history. Author Neal Bascomb interweaves characters such as Al Smith and Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leading up to an astonishing climax that illustrates one of the most ingenious (and secret) architectural achievements of all time.

Winner of the Motor Press Guild Best Book of the Year Award & Dean Batchelor Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism For fans of The Boys in the Boat and In the Garden of Beasts, a pulse-pounding tale of triumph by an improbable team of upstarts over Hitler's fearsome Silver Arrows during the golden age of auto racing. They were the unlikeliest of heroes. Rene Dreyfus, a former top driver on the international racecar circuit, had been banned from the best European teams--and fastest cars--by the mid-1930s because of his Jewish heritage. Charles Weiffenbach, head of the down-on-its-luck automaker Delahaye, was desperately trying to save his company as the world teetered toward the brink. And Lucy Schell, the adventurous daughter of an American multi-millionaire, yearned to reclaim the glory of her rally-driving days. As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, these three misfits banded together to challenge Hitler's dominance at the apex of motorsport: the Grand Prix. Their quest for redemption culminated in a remarkable race that is still talked about in racing circles to this day--but which, soon after it ended, Hitler attempted to completely erase from history. Bringing to life this glamorous era and the sport that defined it, Faster chronicles one of the most inspiring, death-defying upsets of all time: a symbolic blow against the Nazis during history's darkest hour.

The heart-pounding story of an unlikely band of ragtags who took on Hitler's Grand Prix driver.In the years before World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted to prove the greatness of the Third Reich in everything from track and field to motorsports. The Nazis poured money into the development of new race cars, and Mercedes-Benz came out with a stable of supercharged automobiles called Silver Arrows. Their drivers dominated the sensational world of European Grand Prix racing and saluted Hitler on their many returns home with victory.As the Third Reich stripped Jews of their rights and began their march toward war, one driver, Ren Dreyfus, a 32-year-old Frenchman of Jewish heritage who had enjoyed some early successes on the racing circuit, was barred from driving on any German or Italian race teams, which fielded the best in class, due to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini.So it was that in 1937, Lucy Schell, an American heiress and top Monte Carlo Rally driver, needed a racer for a new team she was creating to take on Germany's Silver Arrows. Sensing untapped potential in Dreyfus, she funded the development of a nimble tiger of a new car built by a little-known French manufacturer called Delahaye. As the nations of Europe marched ever closer to war, Schell and Dreyfus faced down Hitler's top drivers, and the world held its breath in anticipation, waiting to see who would triumph.

Highly acclaimed author Neal Bascomb brings his peerless research and fast-paced narrative style to a young adult adaptation of one of his most successful adult books of all time, The Perfect Mile, an inspiring and moving story of three men racing to achieve the impossible -- the perfect four-minute mile.Scholastic Focus is the premier home of thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and thoughtfully designed works of narrative nonfiction aimed at middle-grade and young adult readers. These books help readers learn about the world in which they live and develop their critical thinking skills so that they may become dynamic citizens who are able to analyze and understand our past, participate in essential discussions about our present, and work to grow and build our future.There was a time when running the mile in four minutes was believed to be beyond the limits of human foot speed. In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners each set out to break this barrier: Roger Bannister was a young English medical student who epitomized the ideal of the amateur; John Landy the privileged son of a genteel Australian family; and Wes Santee the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy and natural athlete.Spanning three continents and defying the odds, these athletes' collective quest captivated the world. Neal Bascomb's bestselling adult account adapted for young readers delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.

The dramatic story of Gandhi and India's long march to freedom by award-winning author Neal Bascomb. In 1930, the Indian people, long ruled by their British occupiers, were at a breaking point. No more could many stand the terrible demands of colonial rule. At this pivotal moment, Mohandas Gandhi, who had suffered firsthand for decades the cruelty of his oppressors, saw an opportunity to win his people's freedom. And so, Gandhi led a small band of his followers on a grueling march from his ashram in western India to the Arabian Sea. After 24 days and 241 miles under a withering sun, the marchers arrived on the Dandi seashore. There, Gandhi scooped up a handful of salt to protest the much-hated British salt tax, demonstrating to the world the injustice of Britain's yoke and setting the stage for a popular national uprising. In the dramatic months that followed, Gandhi led acts of nonviolent resistance against the British Raj across the country that would eventually culminate in a brutal crackdown. But Gandhi and those who bravely stood with him faced arrest, beatings, and even bullets without ever raising a hand in retaliation. These events inspired India to demand its liberty from Britain, awakened the world to a movement that would forever change the course of history, and inspired generations of freedom fighters all over the globe. Award-winning author Neal Bascomb chronicles what was arguably Gandhi's most notable campaign in his struggle for India's independence. His focus on nonviolent protest and revolutionary action introduces young readers to a pivotal historical moment with timely implications for today's world. thought-provoking retelling of India's liberation from British colonial rule timely look at how historical figures used their voices to create positive change Beautifully written by award-winning author Neal Bascomb

In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, captured soldiers and pilots narrowly avoided death only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of brutal POW camps. After several unsuccessful escapes, a group of Allied prisoners of Holzminden - Germany's land-locked Alcatraz- hatched the most elaborate escape plan yet known. With ingenious engineering, disguises, forgery and courage, their story would electrify Britain in some of its darkest hours of the war.Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this little-known story narrative to life amid the despair of the trenches and the height of patriotic duty.

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to build an atomic bomb. They have the physicists, but they don't have enough 'heavy water' – essential for their nuclear designs. For two years, the Nazis have occupied Norway, and with it the Vemork hydroelectric plant, the world's sole supplier of heavy water. Under threat of death, its engineers push production into overtime. For the Allies, Vemork must be destroyed. But how could they reach the plant, high in a mountainous valley? The answer became the most dramatic commando raid of the war: the British SOE brought together a brilliant scientist and eleven refugee Norwegian commandos, who, with little more than parachutes, skis and tommy guns, would destroy Hitler's nuclear ambitions. Based on exhaustive research and never-before-seen diaries and letters, The Winter Fortress is a compulsively readable narrative about a group of young men who survived the cold of a Norwegian winter and evaded the clutches of the Gestapo, to save the world from destruction.

Adolf Eichmann was the operational manager of the genocide that dispatched six million European Jews to the gas chambers. Escaping US custody in 1946, he hid in various locations in Germany before absconding in 1950 via a 'ratline' escape route to Argentina, where he lived, undisturbed, for the next decade. On 11 May 1960 he was captured in an operation of breathtaking skill and daring by a team of Mossad agents in a Buenos Aires suburb. Smuggled out of Argentina to Israel, Eichmann was indicted there on charges of crimes against humanity, and hanged on 1 June 1962. Part history, part detective story, part international thriller, Hunting Eichmann brings the story of the fifteen-year search for Eichmann more thrillingly, more accurately, more completely to life than ever before. Superbly researched and relentlessly paced, Hunting Eichmann brings us closer to understanding the architect of the Holocaust than ever before - a man whose terrifying ordinariness came to embody the 'banality of evil'.