Jennifer Armstrong’s “The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History” (Knopf/Random House) is a compilation of more than 100 stories that reveal how our nation was shaped by people and events over the past 400 years. Beginning with the first European-settled city, St. Augustine in Florida, through the discovery of dinosaur bones in a New Jersey ravine in 1856, the book is filled with fascinating facts and figures. Kids get to learn about Sojourner Truth’s eloquent pleas for abolition, the Wright Brothers first awkward flight, and the first nuclear explosion. (Read Review)