They've been called the Greatest Generation, and now their stories will live forever, passed on to the next generation through this new dynamic and engaging group biography.

2025 NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Book Winner

This engaging book briefly profiles 25 individuals (or groups) who were WWII heroes, ranging from the well known...to the more obscure.... Appealing color illustrations and photographs accompany the easy-to-read and interesting profiles that may spur readers to do further research.--Booklist

From soldiers to pilots, nurses to factory workers, moms and dads to brothers and sisters--the stories in Heroes of World War II highlight timeless examples of courage, sacrifice, and selflessness.

Meet . . .

• Ira Hayes, a Native American who was one of the six Marines to raise the flag on Iwo Jima.
• Dorothy Still, a prisoner of war nurse in the Philippines whose makeshift hospital treated thousands of prisoners.
• Guy Stern, one of the original Ritchie Boys who worked to gather intelligence on the front lines.
• Plus many, many more.

The Heroes Remembered Library brings the most exciting time periods in history to life through the stories of the heroes we often don't remember, but who deserve to be rediscovered and heralded by generations to come.

A fast-paced, interactive adventure series for kids, featuring death-defying moments in history! This time featuring the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor!

The surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, was a devastating and horrific moment in American history. Young readers make decisions, and determine their own survival, by joining forces on the ground in the days and hours before and after the devastation in Decide and Survive: Attack on Pearl Harbor.

Don't forget: YOU, the reader, are in the driver's seat! This time, you're an eleven-year-old child of US naval military officers, enjoying life on the island, when the bombing begins. Your first decision is whether to go in search of your father or stay and protect your mother and sister. Along the way, readers are asked to protect half-Japanese classmates, save their abducted family, or even help raise Adolph Hitler to become a good person. With each page turn YOU decide which way the story, and mystery, unravels.

A book like no other--to be used in a variety of ways--challenges puzzle-solving readers and ignites a love of history for life. The perfect gift or educational book, slyly written as an interactive narrative adventure, will delight and enthrall avid and reluctant readers with its energy and excitement.

As an added educational bonus, extensive backmatter includes a timeline, information about the Japanese fighter planes, details about the nuclear bombings of Japan, the internment of Japanese Americans in the US, Japanese stereotypes in American comic books of the time, and the Nanking Massacre.

About the Decide & Survive series:

Your Call to Adventure!

Dear Reader, this is your story.

You control how history happens through the choices you make.

Don't read this book from the first page to the last. Instead, follow the directions at the bottom of each page. When you're offered options, choose wisely because your decision could end in disaster as easily as triumph.

No matter how your story ends, feel free to start over and create a different story with a new outcome.

Adventure, mystery, danger, and fortune await. Good luck!

Step into the 1860's Wild West with Stagecoach to Oblivion, the third installment of the Kid Crimson western series.

Kid Crimson's dad doesn't hate him...he just wants Kid dead.

Still the youngest and deadliest gun in Virginia City, Kid Crimson finds himself married and nearing fatherhood as the Civil War rages on. To his horror, he encounters a new conspiracy to destroy the silver mines financing President Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union, this one led by Kid's own father, a brutal plantation owner Kid thought he'd escaped forever. After taking over the neighboring town of Silver City, Crimson Senior uses it as a base to bombard Virginia City with a trebuchet that launches fiery projectiles.

Kid's diabolical dad is also thwarting stage routes to California with help from a thrill-killing trio of Texas mercenaries called the Annihilators and boxing champion Tom Molyneaux. Lingering at the margins is a magician, Thurston Larue, who boasts of having escaped a Confederate prison. Is the illusionist simply performing shows across the West? Or is he in on the plot?

Thanks to new allies-stage driver Hank Monk, medicine man Dr. Skorpion, and stunning dime novelist and unofficial Kid Crimson biographer Clementine Dunn-Kid takes the fight to Silver City in a battle that will decide not just the fate of the West, but the outcome of the Civil War. Don't miss out-grab your copy now!

Step into the 1860's Wild West with Guns of Goblin Valley, the second installment of the new Kid Crimson western series.

After the Union Army's failed attempt to prosecute Confederate sympathizers in town, Kid Crimson is recruited by President Lincoln's intermediaries to scout a Mormon foundry suspected of manufacturing war materiél in Utah.

Kid makes the journey alongside Nellie Brown, a deadly knife-thrower he met at a traveling circus, saving a Latter-day Saints bruiser named Rocker Portwell from an Indian attack. The devout enforcer reveals the Mormons are building cannons for Lincoln, and together, they devise a plan to transport the weapons to Kansas.

But when the foundry is ravaged in a surprise assault by the cunning Rebel commander Prince Polignac, Kid must face a grim truth: Polignac aims to steal gold from Utah's secret Union bank and bring mercenaries and cannons to Virginia City, destroying the mines and slaughtering residents.

Kid Crimson won't back down. With Nellie's blades, a circus lion guarded by a 10-year-old Paiute animal whisperer, and an African elephant armored in Rocker's steel, he's ready to face Prince Polignac head-on.

Can his ace crew outmaneuver Polignac's forces and save Virginia City before it's too late?

Step into the 1860's Wild West with Gunpowder Mountain, the thrilling first installment of the new Kid Crimson western series.

Join Kid Crimson as he flees his abusive past, navigating the treacherous landscapes of the Confederate South to find refuge in the bustling boomtown of Virginia City, Nevada.

As the youngest and most ruthless hired gun in town, Kid faces off against brutal gangs, all while capturing the attention of the town's loveliest saloon girls. But Kid's life takes a dangerous turn when he uncovers a Confederate plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln during his secret visit to Nevada-a conspiracy that involves a hydrogen machine, air balloons, a mountain of gunpowder, explosive-sniffing hogs, and even a poisoned stew.

Caught between two women vying for his affection and a looming miner's revolt, Kid Crimson must navigate a perilous path to keep Lincoln safe and secure his own future.

Violent, sensual, and darkly comical, Gunpowder Mountain is a journey into history that will live far into the future.

A postapocalyptic adventure in Las Vegas for readers of all ages.

Set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Hammer of the Dogs is a literary dystopian adventure filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley's survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she'll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school's most powerful opponents.

When she's captured by the enemy warlord, she's surprised by two revelations: He's not the monster her headmaster wants her to believe and the one thing she can't safeguard is her own heart. Hammer of the Dogs celebrates the courageousness of a younger generation in the face of authority while exploring the difficult choices a conscionable young woman must make with her back against a blood-spattered wall. It's a story of transformation and maturity, as Lash grapples with her own identity and redefines the glittering Las Vegas that Nevada is known for.

A fast-paced, interactive adventure series for kids, featuring death-defying moments in history! This time-- at the Battle of Gettysburg!

The American Civil War is raging, and General Lee's Confederate Army has invaded Pennsylvania. Canons roar. Bullets whiz. Swords and bayonets clash. Can you help win the battle? And will this at long last be the battle that turns the tide of the war? You decide in Decide & Survive: The Battle of Gettysburg!

About the Decide & Survive series:

Dear Reader, this is your story. Your Call to Adventure! You control how history happens through the choices you make. Don't read this book from the first page to the last. Instead, follow the directions at the bottom of each page. When you're offered options, choose wisely because your decision could end in disaster as easily as triumph.

At the end? Start over and create a different story with a new outcome! Adventure, mystery, danger, and fortune await.

Good luck!

A pop culture odyssey in search of answers to Who am I? and What the heck am I doing here?

More Fun, Please: Exploring the Strange Intersection of Identity and Pop Culture lovingly dissects the overt and underlying influences of popular culture on personal development and evolution, and how pop culture defines personal interpretations of fun.

From a reminiscence of the author's abuela spoiling him at a young age with episodes of That's Incredible! and bowls of Jell-O, to launching a Las Vegas heavy metal band at the age of 35, to discovering Amiri Baraka's early poem about a comic book superhero, this unexpected series of engaging pieces offers a radically different way of thinking about the often-misunderstood pleasures of Smokey and the Bandit, Saturday morning cartoons, and roller-skating rinks. Sometimes serious, occasionally silly, More Fun, Please will inspire both pop culture aficionados and overworked busy people to dig in a little deeper into consciously experiencing more fun. Please!

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Brand-new stories by: John O'Brien, David Corbett, Scott Phillips, Nora Pierce, Tod Goldberg, Bliss Esposito, Felicia Campbell, Jaq Greenspon, José Skinner, Pablo Medina, Christine McKellar, Lori Kozlowski, Vu Tran, Celeste Starr, Preston L. Allen, and Janet Berliner.

From the introduction by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce:

'Ooh, Las Vegas, ' sang the pioneering country-rocker Gram Parsons. 'Every time I hit your Crystal City, you know you're gonna make a wreck out of me.' As Las Vegans, we regularly read about these wrecked lives in newspapers and magazines. We routinely observe people going about their wildly destructive antics on mainstream TV. Often we can't believe these stories are unfolding in our city. They almost seem like put-ons, elaborate pranks borrowed from atrocious cut-rate screenplays. But there they are, these inhabitants of our city, their mug shots staring us down, making us wonder if what Parsons said is really true--that in Las Vegas your only real friend is the queen of spades . . .

The stories gathered in Las Vegas Noir are written by longtime residents and avid chroniclers of Sin City, authors who take you far beyond the neon of Caesars Palace and into the neighborhoods too dangerous for CSI. Absolutely cliché-free, these stories are full of flesh-and-blood characters trapped in dire circumstances that only real Las Vegas neighborhoods can spring.

In this candid biography/photo book of the rock group that has sold over two million copies of its debut album Hot Fuss, noted journalist Jarret Keene reveals the secret meanings of songs by The Killers (The Ballad of Michael Valentine, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine). Also exposed is how the band dodged slings and arrows (a Las Vegas newspaper once dismissed The Killers as a Duran Duran cover band) to become the latest breakthrough rock band--and perhaps the next great rock band of the twenty-first century. Nearly 100 never-before-published photos of The Killers (crowned Best New Band on the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards) are included, from their original lineup to their most recent stadium gigs. The author shares his unique insight into the band's psychology--the hidden power struggles, the friendships cemented and broken--and sheds light on what makes The Killers stand out in the world of rock music today.

In addition to having been close friends and bandmates with members of the now multi-platinum-selling The Killers, author Jarret Keene covered the rapid rise of the group during his three-year stint as arts and entertainment editor for Las Vegas CityLife. From The Killers' humble beginnings as the house band for a local transsexual dive bar to their eventual friendship with Jay Z, Keene saw and heard it all. Keene is also the author of the poetry collection Monster Fashion and the alternative travel guide The Underground Guide to Las Vegas. He lives in Las Vegas.

Pop culture meets and mates with poetic formalism: whether he's writing about Captain America, Godzilla, abandoned babies, or hangovers, Keene's work is unexpected, smart and funny. Where Wile E. Coyote pays homage to George Santayana...or is it the other way around?