1789

Twelve Authors Explore a Year of REBELLION, REVOLUTION & CHANGE

candlewick press, SEPTEMBEr, 2020

including an essay by Amy Alznauer ”Jurij Vega and the Battle at Belgrade,” a history of pi

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A Junior Library Guild Selection
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020 List
★ Kirkus, Starred review ★
★ Publisher’s weekly, Starred Review ★

The acclaimed team that brought us 1968 turns to another year that shook the world with a collection of nonfiction writings by renowned young-adult authors.

“The Rights of Man.” What does that mean? In 1789 that question rippled all around the world. Do all men have rights—not just nobles and kings? What then of enslaved people, women, the original inhabitants of the Americas? In the new United States a bill of rights was passed, while in France the nation tumbled toward revolution. In the Caribbean preachers brought word of equality, while in the South Pacific sailors mutinied. New knowledge was exploding, with mathematicians and scientists rewriting the history of the planet and the digits of pi. Lauded anthology editors Marc Aronson and Susan Campbell Bartoletti, along with ten award-winning nonfiction authors, explore a tumultuous year when rights and freedoms collided with enslavement and domination, and the future of humanity seemed to be at stake.

Some events and actors are familiar: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Marie Antoinette and the Marquis de Lafayette. Others may be less so: the eloquent former slave Olaudah Equiano, the Seneca memoirist Mary Jemison, the fishwives of Paris, the mathematician Jurij Vega, and the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. But every chapter brings fresh perspectives on the debates of the time, inviting readers to experience the passions of the past and ask new questions of today.

suggested retail price (U.S./CAN): $22.99 / $29.99
isbn-13: 9781536208733. age: 12 yrs and up

Susan Campbell Bartoletti

She won the Newbery Honor in 2005 for her narrative nonfiction book Hitler’s Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow.

Marc Aronson

From his website: “Marc Aronson is an author, professor, speaker, editor …and publisher who believes that young people, especially pre-teens and teenagers, are smart, passionate, and capable of engaging with interesting ideas in interesting ways.”