Writer, Editor, Corporate Historian.
"Serious history written in uncomplicated sentences."
—Zenger Media
Books
One of Marian's favorite author gigs is the biannual BooksNJ Festival.
Readers from kids to adults get caught up in the story part of history through my nonfiction books. Zenger Media summarized my style: "Serious history written in uncomplicated sentences."
I enjoy making presentations to libraries. Most often I speak about The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party, showing slides of my research trips and answering questions about getting published.
For information on author visits, please contact me directly. If you're a reader seeking a full author biography of Marian Calabro, please see Something About the Author (Volume 79), or Contemporary Authors (Volume 147), available at public libraries.
The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party
Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin (hardcover)
ISBN 0-395-86610-3
Scholastic Book Clubs (paperback)
In 1846, three years before the Gold Rush, a group of well-to-do families set out from Illinois for California. Within months, they would face trouble crossing the Great Salt Lake desert. Then they would be trapped all winter by 22 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We know them today as the Donner Party, and we remember them mainly for their cannibalism. But there is much more to their true story, which Marian Calabro tells through the eyes of 13-year-old survivor Virginia Reed.
Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.
- California Library Association Beatty Award
- Virginia Library Association Jefferson Cup Award (Honor Book)
- Featured on National Public Radio's Looseleaf Book Company with Tom Bodett
- Selected by Scholastic Book Clubs
- An ALA Notable Book and Booklist Editor’s Choice
- New York Public Library Top 100 List
- Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Horn Book
Great Courtroom Lawyers: Fighting the Cases that Made History
Facts On File (hardcover)
ISBN 0-8160-3323-4
This collection of biographical essays focuses on nine attorneys and the causes and clients on whose behalf they pleaded so passionately. Those profiled are criminal defenders Clarence Darrow, F. Lee Bailey, and William Kuntzler; Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, who presided at Nuremburg; Thurgood Marshall and John W. Davis, who squared off in the battle over school desegregation (Brown v. the Board of Education); and three pioneering women — Belva Lockwood (also the first woman to legitimately run for U.S. president), abortion rights activist Sarah Weddington (Roe v. Wade) and Linda Fairstein (New York City sex crimes prosecutor).
Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.
Zap! A Brief History of Television
Macmillan/Four Winds Press (hardcover)
ISBN 0-02-716242-7
"This chock-full-of-facts book covers the history of television through entertaining anecdotes and information.... Every aspect of television is presented from its invention to what the future has in store. What’s in between—situation comedies, drama, news, children’s TV, advertising, cable, PBS, etc.—is well-organized and refreshingly readable. The 12 chapters are peppered with photographs and quotes, and, most important, are written in a way that encourages students to think about related issues." — Library Journal
Please note that this book was published in the early 1990s, back when "The Simpsons" was new — so it is truly a history of a medium that has since changed radically.
Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.
Operation Grizzly Bear
Macmillan/Four Winds Press (hardcover)
ISBN 0-02-716241-9
Describes the thirteen-year-study of grizzly bears done by John and Frank Craighead in Yellowstone National Park, in which their use of the radio-tracking collar and other innovations added to the scope of human knowledge about the grizzly.
Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.
Tracking Wildlife with Frank Craighead &
Bikes: The World's Most Efficient Traveling Machines
These paperback books are available for classroom use from Pearson Education, as part of the company's Book Treks series from Celebration Press.
"Our students were captivated… Marian Calabro’s presentation provided a virtual field trip. What a successful author visit!"
—Praise from Gennie Williams, Library Media Teacher, Lincoln Elementary School, Burlingame, California
"Truth is indeed as spellbinding as fiction... The research is meticulous and the telling, almost conversational in tone, is riveting."
—Boston Globe
The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party
"The book comes alive with details about clothing, household items and, always, the food, even the tiniest morsels. . . From the haunting cover with its lonely campfire to the recounting of a survivors' reunion, this is a page-turner."
—Ilene Cooper, ALA Booklist (starred review)
The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party
"Eerie and mesmerizing... Readers of all ages can transport themselves back a century and a half to one of the darkest ordeals in American history... This story has often been sensationalized or overdramatized, and here it is not. Included in 183 pages are maps, photos, etchings, diary entries, a chronology of events, a roster of the dead, and list of Donner Web sites."
—Julie Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party
"Heroic yet realistic profiles. The writing is clear and the explanations of legal concepts are nicely handled... Exciting reading."
—ALA Booklist
Great Courtroom Lawyers: Fighting the Cases that Made History
"This chock-full-of-facts book covers the history of TV through entertaining anecdotes and information. Well-organized and refreshingly readable."
—Library Journal
Zap! A Brief History of Television
"Calabro's account of grizzly bear research done by Frank and John Craighead is an involving synthesis of bear lore and field narrative. Several dramas provide suspense."
—ALA Booklist
Operation Grizzly Bear
Company Histories, Book Writing, Speechwriting, Editing and Publishing Services
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If it involves writing and editing, chances are I've done it.
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My nonfiction books emphasize the "story" part of history.
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