Other books that might interest you

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  St Nicholas: The Believer - A...

  Eric Elder, Lana Elder

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  After losing his parents in a plague, Nicholas fights for his faith while trying to make a difference in the world. 
  This book is based on the real St. Nicholas who lived on the northern coast of the Mediterranean in the 3rd century. Many know him as Santa Claus, but few know his real story. 
  Beyond the historical accuracy of the main events, this book is also infused with tenderhearted moments of love and laughter with brand new characters who help bring his story to life. 
  The tagline for the book says, “Nicholas had just one life to live, but if he lived it right, one life was all he would need.” His story demonstrates, in a real and tangible way, the power of one person to touch the world for good. 
  St. Nicholas: The Believer has been adapted into a ballet (One Life: A Christmas Story Ballet), a musical (His Name Was Nicholas), and a puppet opera (San Nicola: Un Viaggio con i Pupi Italici)!

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  Fast in the Ice

  R. M. Ballantyne

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  At the age of 16 Ballantyne went to Canada and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. His rule in writing, being in every case, was to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. 
  In this book he details the lives of the crew as they must overwinter in the frozen north including their meetings with Eskimos and bears and their struggles with disease. This is a realistic account of what life was like for the explorers of the Arctic. (summary by Esther, adapted from wikipedia)

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  Students Build Biological Machines

  PBS NewsHour

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  Scientists in the growing field of synthetic biology use basic biological "building blocks" -- snippets of DNA -- to engineer useful living organisms, like bacteria that can break down plastic. Tom Bearden reports on a do-it-yourself biology competition for college students.

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  Escape from Auschwitz

  Andrey Pogozhev

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  This memoir of a Soviet POW’s escape from a Nazi concentration camp is a remarkable account of cruelty and courage during WWII.   On November 6, 1942, seventy Soviet prisoners of war staged an extraordinary mass escape from Auschwitz. Among the escapees was prisoner number 1418, Andrey Pogozhev. One of the few who managed to evade the pursuing Nazi guards, Pogozhev lived to tell his story in this singular chronicle of wartime survival.   Pogozhev was caught by the Germans in 1941 and immediately sent to Auschwitz. He and his Red Army comrades were then put to work on the Birkenau construction site. Sick, starving, and forced to work in sub-zero weather, more than three hundred Russian prisoners died in a single day. Pogohzev vividly recounts what life was like inside Auschwitz, how a group of prisoners managed to organize and execute one of the few successful escapes from Auschwitz, and his punishing journey as a fugitive fleeing through the Carpathian Mountains into the Ukraine.

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  Dance or Die - From Stateless...

  Ahmad Joudeh

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  A Syria-born dancer offers his deeply personal story of war, statelessness, and the pursuit of the art of dance in this inspirational memoir. Dance or Die is an autobiographical coming-of-age account of Ahmad Joudeh, a young refugee who grows up in Damascus with dreams of becoming a dancer. When he is recruited by one of Syria's top dance companies, neither bombs nor family opposition can keep him from taking classes, practicing hard, and becoming a Middle Eastern celebrity on a Lebanese reality show. Despite death threats if Ahmad continues to dance, his father kicking him out of the house, and the war around him intensifying, he persists and even gets a tattoo on his neck right where the executioner's blade would fall that says, "Dance or Die."  A powerful look at refugee life in Syria, Dance or Die tells of the pursuit of personal expression in the most dangerous of circumstances and of the power of art to transcend war and suffering. It follows Ahmad from Damascus to Beirut to Amsterdam, where he finds a home with one of Europe's top ballet troupes, and from where he continues to fight for the human rights of refugees everywhere through his art, his activism, and his commitment to justice.

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  Relative Strangers - Italian...

  Frank Cicero

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  An Italian American investigates his family’s mixed religious roots in northern Italy and Sicily in this fascinating memoir. 
   
  Italian Protestants? Few people seem to have heard of them, but the author’s mother’s immigrant Italian family was Protestant while his father’s were Catholic immigrants from Sicily. On his father’s side, with dozens of aunts, uncles and numerous cousins, Catholic family gatherings were loud, often profane, with drinking, smoking and raucous celebrations of weddings, births, holidays, and other occasions as well as the mystical rituals inherent in the Catholic faith. 
   
  By contrast, on his mother’s side, family gatherings were small and quiet, with no smoking or drinking; and religion was the core of most family celebrations. But the author had little understanding of the ancient origins of his maternal grandparents’ very different Protestant faith which marked the keen differences between the two sides of the family. 
   
  Relative Strangers describes the author’s search for the religious roots of his parents’ families in northern Italy and Sicily. He traces the history of the Waldensians, the Protestant sect which began in Lyon, France, in the twelfth century, often suffering persecution, but surviving to this day both in Europe and America.

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