to the public. Writing and awards Meltzer's books often chronicled struggles for freedom, such as the American Revolution, the antislavery movement of the nineteenth-century United States, and the movement against antisemitism. He wrote several biographies, including ones of Langston Hughes and Thomas Jefferson. Though most of his books are nonfiction he wrote two historical fiction novels, The Underground Man and Tough Times. The Underground Man is about a white abolitionist in the 1800s United States who is imprisoned for helping escaped slaves. Tough Times details the life of a young man coming of age during the Great Depression and draws on some of Meltzer's personal experiences growing up during the period. Some of Meltzer's other works focus on topics such as piracy, ancient Egypt, and early American wars with the Seminole people. Meltzer co-authored with Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes the book A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, which was published in 1956. He also collaborated with Hughes on Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts, though Hughes passed shortly after the book went to the press. Meltzer won several awards for single books and career achievements. In 1981 he was an American Book Award finalist for All Times, All Peoples: A World History of Slavery. Meltzer's Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust was the 1976 recipient of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in the non-fiction category and winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He won the Boston Globe-Horn Award in 1983 for Jewish Americans: A History in Their own Words, 1650-1950. In 2003 he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the professional children's librarians, which recognizes a living author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children". The committee noted that he "continues to be a model for informational writing today" and cited four works in particular: Brother Can You Spare a Dime?; Ten Queens; All Times, All Peoples; and The Jewish Americans. The two books by Meltzer most widely contained in WorldCat participating libraries are Never to Forget: the Jews of the Holocaust (1976) and Rescue: the story of how gentiles saved Jews in the Holocaust (1988). The latter is classified as juvenile literature and was soon published in a German-language edition. Other achievements and works Meltzer was an adjunct professor at the University of