Elaine Scott

In the Paris village of Montmartre in 1904, fourteen-year-old Brigitte works long hours in her aunt's café, serving such regular customers as the young artist Pablo Picasso, encountering Russian revolutionaries, and longing to attend the exciting nearby circus. Includes author's note on Picasso's painting, "Family of Saltimbanques."

In Poles Apart, Galen Rowell takes us on an exhilarating visual journey to the top and the bottom of the world, using the parallel visions of his camera to reveal the fascinating differences between these polar opposites. The Arctic, home of the polar bear, takes its name from the Greek arktos, meaning bear. The Antarctic - anti-arktos - is a realm devoid of bears, a place where penguins live on the ice unthreatened by land predators. Other differences abound: the North Pole sits in the middle of an ocean surrounded by land, while the South Pole is at 9,300 feet above sea level in the middle of a continent surrounded by oceans. The Arctic has hundreds of species of flowers and thousands of insects; the Antarctic has only two species of flowering plants and almost no flying insects. Boreal forest extends north of the Arctic Circle; Antarctica has no trees and its Dry Valleys are the most lifeless regions on earth. Humans have inhabited the Arctic for thousands of years; in the Antarctic every human is a visitor. In Part One, Rowell's side-by-side photographs highlight the contrasts between North and South. The photo essays of Part Two continue the comparisons but in a different rhythm and with alternating themes, such as Arctic and Antarctic science, polar bears and penguins, and visits to the North and South Poles. Part Three provides detailed information on the story behind each photograph as well a technical data of interest to photographers.

Surveys the history of comic strips, examines different kinds and examples, and discusses how they are created and marketed.

>It was a lovely hot summer afternoon and old Mrs. Lavant had retired as usual in the hammock in her garden for her customary after-luncheon nap. There her great-niece Annabel finds her when she calls with a friend David Wiston, but to her horror the old lady appears to be dead, a fact which David, a budding doctor, duly confirms. Yet within an hour the corpse is sitting up and taking notice. When is a corpse not a corpse? >That is the question for you to answer, with the accomplished assistance of Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard and his friend Desmond Merrion.

A glimpse behind the scenes as a movie is made from a popular video game.

Explains how the Sanctuary for Animals and the Dawn Animal Agency hire out healthy animals for jobs in the performing arts and then use the money to support other animals who are too old or too sick to work themselves.

An introduction to the stock market and the world of financial investing including an explanation of stocks and bonds, the various trading that is done and how profits and losses are accrued.

Sinclair's 1927 novel did for California's oil industry what The Jungle did for Chicago's meat-packing factories. In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

Discusses the different methods used by geophysicists to locate petroleum.

An overview of banking, its history, its services, how banks earn money with your money, and how banking laws ensure protection for your savings.

Set in 18th-century Scotland, Kidnapped follows the follies of young David Balfour. Betrayed by his uncle, he is forced into the terrible world of slavery. Following a shipwreck, David finds himself associated with the alluring Jacobite rebel Alan Breck Stewart. They travel through the Scottish Highlands, united in their desire to retrieve David's rightful fortune and exonerate themselves of a crime in which they had no involvement.