For the first time ever, Edison gets to pack his tackle box for a fishing trip with his dad. He worries about not having all the important things he will need. He searches around the house for all the things he remembers using on past fishing trips. He packs worms, bobbers, net, and gloves with the hopes that he has all the important items a fisheman needs. Then he and his dad walk down to the pond close to his house where they catch fish using the worms, bobbers, net, and fishing gloves to catch a total of eight fish. They enjoy a day of talking, laughing, and catching fish together and really bond. Then they pack up all of their fishing supplies and head for home. When they get home they put away their fishing poles and tackle boxes in the garage. Edison is so excited to tell mom all about his fishing trip so he runs inside to find her. Mom asks him if he had a good time and he tells her he had a great time! Even though Edison worried about what was most important to pack in his tackle box, he ended up learning the most important thing he took with him wasn't even in his tackle box.

THE LIVING CURSE Conrad Edison is cursed. His foster parents die in horrible ways around his birthday, and he ends up back at the orphanage where he and the other children are treated like indentured servants. Forced to work the farm and other menial chores, Conrad holds no hope for a better life. When a man with the ability to mind-control animals inexplicably tries to kill Conrad, the harrowing scrape with death gives him a new perspective on life. He discovers the man had a flying carpet and a talking phone and that the orphanage is only the front for an insidious slave ring. Determined to elude his cursed fate, Conrad decides to escape the orphanage once and for all. The phone leads him to a magical place called Queens Gate and for the first time in his life, he dares to hope for a better life. But unless he can free himself from the curse, the terrible secret it guards could destroy him. THE ANCHORED WORLD When Conrad meets a strange girl while practicing for the Arcane University entrance exam, she takes him through a crack in the world and into a mysterious realm called the Glimmer. Conrad's parents are seeking help from the Glimmer Queen so they can once again rule the Overworld. THE BROKEN RELIC When Conrad learns of an ancient artifact that might be able to reverse death, he dares to hope it might return Cora from the grave. The Broken Relic, however, is highly sought after by collectors though nobody knows exactly what it is. After being kidnapped, chased, and nearly killed, Conrad realized he and his friends will be lucky to survive the preparations for the quest, much less the quest itself.

A sweeping history of the electric light revolution and the birth of modern America The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but more than any other invention, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb marked the arrival of modernity, transforming its inventor into a mythic figure and avatar of an era. In The Age of Edison, award-winning author and historian Ernest Freeberg weaves a narrative that reaches from Coney Island and Broadway to the tiniest towns of rural America, tracing the progress of electric light through the reactions of everyone who saw it and capturing the wonder Edison’s invention inspired. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility in which the greater forces of progress and change are made by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects.

A “fascinating slice of rarely considered American history” (Booklist)—the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

Thomas Edison stunned America in 1879 by unveiling a world-changing invention--the light bulb--and then launching the electrification of America's cities. A decade later, despite having been an avowed opponent of the death penalty, Edison threw his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different sort of device--the electric chair. Deftly exploring this startling chapter in American history, Edison & the Electric Chair delivers both a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison himself. Edison championed the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Was Edison genuinely concerned about the suffering of the condemned? Was he waging a campaign to smear his rival George Westinghouse's alternating current and boost his own system? Or was he warning the public of real dangers posed by the high-voltage alternating wires that looped above hundreds of America's streets? Plumbing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America's love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing an era when the public was mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, powered streetcars, carried telephone conversations--and killed.

FIELD & STREAM, America’s largest outdoor sports magazine, celebrates the outdoor experience with great stories, compelling photography, and sound advice while honoring the traditions hunters and fishermen have passed down for generations.

FIELD & STREAM, America’s largest outdoor sports magazine, celebrates the outdoor experience with great stories, compelling photography, and sound advice while honoring the traditions hunters and fishermen have passed down for generations.