History Childhood

The Cultural Evolution of Childhood and Parenting: How Ideas About Raising Children Changed Across History explores one of the most overlooked truths of human life: childhood is not a timeless or universal experience. What societies believe about children, how they raise them, and what they expect from them has shifted dramatically across history. From prehistoric survival based child rearing to the highly supervised and technologically mediated childhoods of today, this book reveals how parenting ideals are shaped by culture, economics, religion, science, and power rather than instinct ...

“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker “A Childhood has been widely recognized as a masterpiece, a Dickensian document of survival and blight in Depression-era Georgia.” –Harper’s The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the...

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security.

Set in New York City in the ’90s, Angela Shanté’s poems and stories paint a mosaic of childhood that is shaped by the past and reverberates into the present. As Shanté navigates the city through memory, this timeless book illuminates the places where Black girls are nurtured or boxed in, through stories and poems about expectations, exploitation, love, loss, and self-realization.

Thirty years in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. With over 100,000 copies in print since its original publication in 2002, this book is collection of essays and speeches and includes a describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto's "guerrilla teaching". John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and was a New York State Teacher of the Year.

‘A powerful, harrowing and courageous book.’ - Piers Morgan 'An extraordinarily vivid, raw must-read. Toula writes with a powerful resilience and a big-hearted capacity to love - a vital glimpse into the inner world of a survivor.' - Nel Walker, Trauma Therapist (Retired) The complete memoir from Toula Mavridou-Messer. From the age of five, Toula was sexually abused by her mother’s partner for fifteen long years. The terror shaped every moment of her childhood and left her with severe complex PTSD that she carries to this day. In this raw, unflinching account - originally shared as ...

In 1972, when Alexandra Fuller was two years old, her parents finally abandoned their English life and returned to what was then Southern Rhodesia and to the beginning of a civil war. By the time she was eight, the war was in full swing. Her parents veered from being determined farmers to being blind drunk, whilst Alexandra and her sister, the only survivors of five children, alternately take up target practice and sing Rod Stewart songs from sun bleached rocks.

Based on historical fact, full of intrigue and chivalry at a time when Normandy was not part of France, this is the romantic childhood history of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy. After his father was assassinated, when he was just nine years old, he is kidnapped and imprisoned by Louis of France, who wanted to annex Normandy. But thanks to the bravery and daring of Richard's loyal squire and knight, Osmond de Centeville, he makes good his escape.

Pioneers of Human Behaviour: Melanie Klein A Gateway to Her Life, Theories, and Legacy Few figures in psychology have provoked as much debate, division, and enduring influence as Melanie Klein. Bold, uncompromising, and original, she redefined psychoanalysis by entering the inner world of children, giving voice to their unconscious conflicts and reshaping how we understand the earliest bonds of life. This concise yet powerful volume distils Klein’s extraordinary career into clear, engaging chapters. From her beginnings in Vienna to her stormy years in London, and from the creation of play...

Enjoy charming tales of yesteryear… Take a look at life in the early 20th century through the eyes of a young boy. A natural storyteller, Bud shares tales of his childhood days in rural Missouri. The close-knit farming community where Bud lived with his parents and seven siblings stuck together and helped each other in order to survive. Born in 1917, Bud grew up on a farm in the middle of America. He describes the old-fashioned ways of those days, including sewing clothing from flour sacks, making baseballs from balls of string, and riding horses to school. Taught the importance of hard ...

The New York Times bestselling story from the author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride...

Every president started out as a kid! Forget the legends, tall tales, and historic achievements - before they were presidents, the future leaders of the United States had regular-kid problems just like you. John F. Kennedy hated his big brother. Lyndon Johnson pulled pranks in class. Barack Obama was bothered by bullies. And Bill Clinton was crazy clumsy (he once broke his leg jumping rope). Kid Presidents tells all of their stories and more in these hilarious biographies. History has never been this much fun!

INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A beautiful tale of hope, courage, and sisterhood—inspired by the real House of Mercy and the girls confined there for daring to break the rules. Growing up in New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their...

The New York Times bestselling, authoritative account of the life of Charles Manson, filled with surprising new information and previously unpublished photographs: “A riveting, almost Dickensian narrative…four stars” (People). More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female...

A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to reckon with the corrupting force of a system that trained children to become its willing executioners Strung Up examines how the lynching...

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive. The goal of these vaccines is precisely what we’re now seeing in such abundance among our chronically ill children: the provocation of immune response. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life.

Originally published in 1950, The Little Princesses was the first account of British Royal life inside Buckingham Palace as revealed by Marion Crawford, who served as governess to princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

BONUS FEATURE: Exclusive interview with the author. From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the last century. A book that delivers on the...

A bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables . . . before Anne: A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert, and the choices that will open her life to the...

A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek ​From one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family...