"The seventeen young men and women profiled here, who ranged in age from twelve to twenty-three at the time of their heroic deeds, came from ten nations, diverse cultures and races, and different times over a 250-year period. Many of their stories are told here for the first time. Among the lives depicted are those of Charles Eastman, raised as a Sioux, who was thrust at age fourteen into an alien white world and who later returned to his people as a physician and saved many lives at Wounded Knee; Olaudah Equiano, a West African sold into slavery in the eighteenth century whose autobiography offers an unflinching portrayal of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade; and Chai Ling, the girl who assumed leadership of the student rebellion in China's Tiananmen Square."--BOOK JACKET.