Fifty Famous Stories Retold

These fifty tales have been introducing young readers to the great figures of history for over a century. James Baldwin had a gift for finding the dramatic heart of a story and telling it with the kind of breathless urgency that makes legend feel immediate. Here you'll meet Alexander the Great, who at thirteen tamed the wildest horse anyone had ever seen. You'll follow William Tell as he stood beneath an apple on his son's head. You'll witness King Alfred burning the cakes and George Washington and his hatchet. These are not the polished, sanitized histories of textbooks but something older and more alive: the stories people told around fires to explain why certain people mattered, why certain acts mattered. For generations of readers, this book was a doorway into the wider world of the past, proof that history, at its best, is just a collection of very good stories.