Best friends Justin and Carlos are forced to play on rival baseball teams. By the end of the season, they aren't even talking.

In 1915, the United States experienced the 9/11 of its time. A German torpedo sank the Lusitania killing nearly 2,000 innocent passengers. The ensuing hysteria helped draw the United States into World War I—the bitter, brutal conflict that became known as the Great War and the War to End All Wars. But as U.S. troops fought to make the world safe for democracy abroad, our own government eroded freedoms at home, especially for German-Americans. Free speech was no longer an operating principle of American democracy. Award-winning author Ann Bausum asks, just where do Americans draw the line of justice in times of war? Drawing thought-provoking parallels with President Wilson’s government and other wartime administrations, from FDR to George W. Bush, Bausum’s analysis has plenty of history lessons for the world today. Her exhaustive research turns up astonishing first-person stories and rare images, and the full-color design is fresh and stunning. The result is a gripping book that is well-positioned for the run-up to the World War I centennial. National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources. Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

An architect’s gripping account of living and working in war-torn Syria, and the role architecture plays in whether a community crumbles or comes together Drawing on the author’s personal experience of living and working as an architect in Syria, this timely and fascinating account offers an eyewitness perspective on the country’s bitter conflict through the lens of architecture, showing how the built environment and its destruction hold up a mirror to the communities that inhabit it. From Syria’s tolerant past, with churches and mosques built alongside one another in Old Homs and members of different religions living harmoniously together, the book chronicles the recent breakdown of social cohesion in Syria’s cities. With the lack of shared public spaces intensifying divisions within the community, and corrupt officials interfering in town planning for their own gain, these actions are symptomatic of wider abuses of power. With firsthand accounts of mortar attacks and stories of refugees struggling to find a home, The Battle for Home is a compelling explanation of the personal impact of the conflict and offers hope for how architecture can play a role in rebuilding a sense of identity within a damaged society.

Reproduction of the original: Orphan's Home Mittens, and George's Account of the Battle of Roanoke Island. by Aunt Fanny

By the sixth week of the Irish Civil War in 1922, all eyes turned to Cork, as the National Army readied its climactic attack on the 'rebel capital'. At 2 a.m. on a Bank Holiday Monday, Emmet Dalton and 450 soldiers of the National Army landed at Passage West, in one of the most famous surprise attacks in Irish military history. Their daring amphibious assault knocked the famed Cork IRA onto the back foot, though three more days of stubborn fighting was required for the National Army to secure the city. The retreating IRA left destruction in their wake, setting the stage for Michael Collins' fatal final visit to his home county. For the first time, 'The Battle for Cork' tells the full story of the battle for Cork, showing all the chaos, bravery and misery of the largest engagement of the Irish Civil War and the final defeat of Republican Cork.

The Battle: Good vs. Evil is a novel about a teenage girl, whose life is about to be turned upside down by a terrifying event that happens at her graduation party. She turns to the Priest of the church for help, not knowing what to do. He gives her advice about what to do, but it's God who brings her out of this ordeal.

It is generally accepted that Britain was held together during the second world war by a spirit of national democratic `consensus'. But whose interests did the consensus serve? And how did it unravel in the years immediately after victory? This well observed and powerfully argued book overturns many of our assumptions about the national spirit of 1939-45. It shows that the current return to right-wing politics in Britain was prefigured by ideologies of change during and immediately after the war.

In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York's "master builder" Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways. Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz contradicts this conventional view. New York City, Gratz argues, recovered precisely because of the waning power of Moses. His decline in the late 1960s and the drying up of big government funding for urban renewal projects allowed New York to organically regenerate according to the precepts defined by Jane Jacobs in her classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and in contradiction to Moses's urban philosophy. As American cities face a devastating economic crisis, Jacobs's philosophy is again vital for the redevelopment of metropolitan life. Gratz who was named as one of Planetizen's Top 100 Urban Thinkers gives an on-the-ground account of urban renewal and community success.