"Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was both the first African American woman elected to the US Congress and the first African American woman of a major political party to make a serious run for president of the United States. Though her run for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination may not have ended in victory, it was successful in forging a grassroots campaign that united diverse Americans behind a candidate who championed their collective interests...

It's the spring of 1877 in Washington, D.C., and at the U.S. Naval Observatory, Hugh Allison has conceived a secret ambition: to project an image through time and space. But his plan takes on urgent life only when the mathematically gifted Cynthia May enters his orbit as one of the observatory's human "computers." A Civil War widow whose beauty has been shadowed by worry and poverty, Cynthia reluctantly falls in love with the younger Hugh, who missed...

Ingrid Betancourt, a senator and a presidential candidate in Colombia, grew up among diplomats, literati, and artists who congregated at her parents' elegant home in Paris, France. Her father served as Colombia's ambassador to UNESCO and her mother, a political activist, continued her work on behalf of the country's countless children whose lives were being destroyed by extreme poverty and institutional neglect. Intellectually, Ingrid was influenced...