James A. Michener, the acclaimed author of sweeping historical blockbusters, chronicles his personal involvement in one of the most dramatic elections of the twentieth century: the presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. A relative newcomer to politics, Michener served as the Democratic chairman in his native Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a rural battleground precinct where the major controversies of the day—notably Kennedy’s Catholicism—brought cultural divides to the forefront. First published shortly after the 1960 election, Report of the County Chairman remains an intimate, gripping account of the power of grassroots political involvement.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii.
Praise for *Report of the County Chairman
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“A candid account of the Kennedy/Nixon campaign.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
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“Fascinating . . . The personalities are vividly and vigorously sketched—the workers, the volunteers, the hatchet men, the pros and . . . key figures on the barnstorming tour.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Instructive . . . Anti-Catholicism was not just a Southern problem. In Pennsylvania, accounts of increasing anti-Catholicism were widespread. No one documented this sentiment more clearly than famed Pennsylvania novelist James Michener.”—The Morning Call* (Allentown, Pennsylvania) Views: 553
Sweeping through the Small Magellanic Cloud, leaving a trail of ravished worlds and destroyed civilization, is the Udef -- the Unidentified Death Force. The best scientific minds of two galaxies can make nothing of it. The Udef is invisible. No scientific instrument can detect its presence. The only marks of its passing are the screams of its victims and the piles of dead left in its wake.Momentarily safe on the world of Montura, Jan Darzek's strategy against the Udeffalters. He and his assistant Effie have been ordered there by a supreme computer -- that isn't telling why. There is nothing to do on Montura but frantically wheel and deal in its spectacular interworld trading market. Supreme has also sent a perplexed Dr. Malina Darr from Earth, whose apparent purpose is to cure an unknown disease in an alien life form no one has ever seen ...The three of them must content with a mad mixture of Montura's mysterious race of natives, the melange of self-serving life forms in the marketplace, and the Kloatraz -- the universe's strangest "living" computer -- while the Udef comes ever closer to wiping out every intelligent life form in the universe. Somehow it must be stopped before no one is left to fight it.** Views: 553
These eleven stories describe the misadventures of the delightfully idle "Eggs," "Beans," and "Crumpets" that populate the Drones club: young men wearing spats, starting spats, and landing in sticky spots. For the first of his many appearances in the Wodehouse canon, Uncle Fred comes to what he believes to be the rescue. Views: 553
A Fawcett Gold Medal book.Someone was stealing American fighter planes. Not one at a time once in a while but in groups. More than a dozen Thrashers were missing from Southeast Asia and Durell is sent in to find out who and direct American forces in to recover them.
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In which we find Jherek Carnelian, one of the small population of hedonistic immortals remaining on earth at the end of time, still obsessively in love with Mrs. Amelia Underwood, a reluctant time-traveler from Victorian England. After narrowly escaping death in nineteenth-century London, Jherek again is separated from his love by several millenniums. And so he begins a new, headlong campaign - seesawing through space and time regardless of risk or consequence - to reunite himself with Mrs. Underwood.
This is volume II in a trilogy, The Dancers at the End of Time, of which An Alien Heat was the first. It is full of astounding antics and incredible characters. Another outstanding book by one of the most esteemed and prolific writers of science fiction. Views: 553
Ralph was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes, the pleasures and perils of ranching in the early twentieth century are experienced... auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms all give authentic color to Little Britches. So do wonderfully told adventures, which equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary.
Newly republished in a hardcover edition with a 1950s cover, jacket and pictorial endpages. Interior illustrations by Edward Shenton. Views: 553
“It is a work of high intellectual power, of deep human insight, of penetrating social and philosophical criticism, and it is also a work of poetic and passionate tenderness.”Islandia occupies the southern portion of the Karain subcontinent, which lies in the Southern Hemisphere. Its people are an agrarian, highly civilized race, menaced from the north by savage tribes and from the coasts by Arabic raiders. Its civilization is an ancient one, protected from outside intervention by a natural fortress of towering mountains. To this isolated country—this alien, compelling, and totally fascinating world—comes John Lang, American consul. As the reader lives with Lang in Islandia, as he comes to know this magnetic land, its unique people, its strange customs…he may very well find himself experiencing a feeling of envy: a wish that he, like Lang, be permitted, at the book’s end, to return once more and spend the rest of his days in Islandia. Views: 552
First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond . . . then came the 'suicide' that was murder . . . the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat . . . a suspicious death in a locked gun-room . . . a million dollar bond robbery . . . the curse of a pharaoh's tomb . . . a jewel robbery by the sea . . . the abduction of a Prime Minister . . . the disappearance of a banker . . . a phone call from a dying man . . . and, finally, the mystery of the missing will.
What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot! Views: 552
A selection of mysteries, some light-hearted, some romantic, some very deadly! Twelve tantalizing cases! the curious disappearance of Lord Listerdale; a newlywed's fear of her ex-fiance; a strange encounter on a train; a domestic murder investigation; a wild man's sudden personality change; a retired inspector's hunt for a murderess; a young woman's impersonation of a duchess; a necklace hidden in a basket of cherries; a mystery writer's arrest for murder; an astonishing marriage proposal; a soprano's hatred for a baritone; the case of the rajah's emerald. All have one thing in common: the skilful hand of Agatha Christie.Review“They are, without exception, the work of an experienced and artful cook.”Times Literary Supplement“The acknowledged Queen of Detective fiction”Observer Review"They are, without exception, the work of an experienced and artful cook." Times Literary Supplement "The acknowledged Queen of Detective fiction" Observer Views: 552
In The Crack in Space, a repairman discovers that a hole in a faulty Jifi-scuttler leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first black president of the United States, thinks alter-Earth is the solution to the chronic overpopulation that has seventy million people cryogenically frozen; Tito Cravelli, a shadowy private detective, wants to know why Dr Lurton Sands is hiding his mistress on the planet; billionaire mutant George Walt wants to make the empty world all his own. But when the other earth turns out to be inhabited, everything changes.
Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 552
Why would anyone break into a bookmobile and take nothing? The Spotlight Club investigates. Views: 552
The wealthy old woman was dead – a trifle sooner than expected. The intricate trail of horror and senseless murder led from a beautiful Hampshire village to a fashionable London flat and a deliberate test of "amour" – staged by the debonair sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Here the modern detective story begins to come to its own; and all the historical importance aside, it remains an absorbing and charming story today. Views: 550
