Joined by Fate: Intertwined Biographies

Lewis and Clark first explored the North American West more than two hundred years ago. A number of Native Americans helped the duo and their crew survive their travels from 1804 to 1806. In fact, one of them, Sacagawea, is now a legend. The Shoshone teen was married to a French Trader and became mother to a baby son. Because she spoke two Native languages, Sacagawea joined the Lewis and Clark expedition as a translator. Together, they traveled eight thousand miles to the Pacific Ocean and back, no easy feat during the early nineteenth century. Ever since, their story has been told and retold. Readers will learn how fate brought them together in life and in death.

Until John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, the assassination of a U.S. President was considered unthinkable. All of that changed on April 14, 1865, when Booth shot Lincoln as the president watched the play Our American Cousin. What led Booth to commit this murder, and what effect did this deadly act have on the United States? With this book, readers will take a closer look at this history-making event as well as the lives of Lincoln and Booth before their fateful encounter. Booth may have assassinated Lincoln, but even today the 16th president remains one of the nation's most respected.

To this day, the relationship between Hernán Cortés and his translator La Malinche remains confusing. Was Cortés a double-crossing murderer or a heroic conqueror? Was La Malinche, an enslaved woman from Aztec royalty, an intelligent woman doing what was necessary to stay alive or the betrayer of her people? The history books have not been kind to her. However, you view this pair, one thing is clear: their stories cannot be told without linking their biographies. As your readers will find out, there is little doubt that their pairing forever changed Mexico and the Americas.

To say that Thomas Jefferson was complicated would be an understatement. A founding father and third American president, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. It said that "all men are created equal." Yet Jefferson owned slaves, including a woman named Sally Hemings with whom scholars believe he fathered several children. Some two hundred years after the birth of their first child, interest in Hemings and Jefferson has hardly died down. Movies, television shows, newspaper articles, and literature have been devoted to the pair. Jefferson's legacy has also suffered as details emerge about his ties to Hemings. Is he a man that Americans should respect? With the help of this fascinating book, readers will learn about the nature of Jefferson's connection to someone who was legally his property, and about his descendants, both black and white.

In 1804, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought the most famous duel in American history. Both men had served with great courage during the American Revolution. Afterward, each had become an important lawyer and politician. Hamilton helped write the United States Constitution and became America's first treasury secretary, but he stopped Burr from becoming president in 1800. This move and others led to a strong hatred between the two men, which finally ended in a deadly face-off. Keep readers at the edge of their seats with this riveting examination of a history-changing rivalry.

For much of the world, turning on electricity is as easy as flipping a switch, but that wasn't always the case. At the end of the nineteenth century, two geniuses competed to change the world: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. In the War of Currents, they fought to shape the world with their electrical systems. Without Edison and Tesla, we might not have the lightbulb, the radio, affordable electricity, and movies. This book examines the lives of these two inventors, their dizzying array of creations, and a professional rivalry that began the moment they met each other.