A collection of memories, experiences, and photographs of a people who were first Africans, then slaves, and finally African Americans.

Describes the building of the Taj Mahal, an ivory-white marble mausoleum in the Indian city of Agra.

"In this addition to the What Was? series, kids will experience what it was like to be in San Francisco in 1906 when the ground buckled in a major, catastrophic earthquake. One early April morning in 1906, the people of San Francisco were jolted awake by a mammoth earthquake--one that registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale. Not only was there major damage from the quake itself but broken gas lines sparked a fire that ravaged the city for days. More than...

Returning home to investigate the possible connection of his family's tea shop with smugglers, Seikei, now a samauri in eighteenth-century Japan, becomes involved in murder at a local puppet theater and saving the life of his sister's accused boyfriend.

In the summer of 1936, Tony runs away from his home above his family's Italian restaurant in Chicago, while in Berlin David is present at the Olympics and prepares to move to America.

In the 1950s Matthew befriends a Negro boy who introduces him to the new music, and together they start a rock-and-roll band.

Describes the shifting ideal of beauty in the United States, from colonial times to the present, and how it influenced and was influenced by societal and economic changes.

Forced to leave their homes in Georgia in 1837, Sarah Tsaluh Rogers, her family, and other Cherokees make the long and difficult journey along the Trail of Tears to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma.