The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of George Washington Carver and Science and Invention in America Book

This illuminating and inspiring biography of one of America's most influential thinkers and innovators, George Washington Carver, is a master-class in anti-racist writing that fully incorporates Carver's life and work into a multicultural, global context. Outstanding choice for all school libraries and anyone studying the UN's Sustainable Development Goals centered on poverty, hunger, climate action, and biodiversity.

On every page is an international, multicultural timeline running under the text about Carver's childhood in slavery, his quest for the solitude of the forest and its flowers and plants, his persistent yearning for education that drove him to leave the white homestead where he and his brother were being raised in the segregated South at age 12, his work doing laundry and odd jobs to pay his way through schools for Black students, his brilliance at the predominately white Iowa State that led Booker T. Washington to offer him a position at the black-agricultural college in Tuskegee, Alabama. Through it all, Carver cared little for money or earthly possessions, although he was quite proud of his progress and unafraid to say so, wearing that shield of pride as a kind of protection from a society that de-valued and dehumanized Black people and carried him ever forward against all odds, and was known for wearing well-worn suits that were always and only brightened by a fresh flower on his lapel. He was openly devout and dedicated to lifting his Black communities and farmers up through environmentally savvy agricultural practices that focused on replenishing the soil through crop rotations and relying on biochemical industry applications of plant products to reduce the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

Illustrated dramatically throughout by the author with compelling woodcut-style drawings that position Carver in his milieu both as an American scientist and a worldwide expert in agricultural products "grown or gotten from the land," every page has something of historical interest to stop and explore. The history of African American people is richly described, highlighted, and celebrated alongside the many humiliations that Carver, renowned expert that he was, had to endure due to the deep ebony of his skin. Right beside the 1899 timeline entry for the completion of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is the entry for Emperor Menelik II unifying Ethiopia and choosing Addis Ababa as the capital. Harness includes the story about how Carver in 1918 shared with a medical missionary to colonized Belgian Congo, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a recipe for peanut milk to supplement the diet of African children. Africa to Asia, politics to popular culture, men and women, Harness takes delight in bringing Carver to a multi-faceted world stage. Highly recommended for students in grades 6 and up.