Dane Coolidge was a 20th century American author best known for producing Western books, including this one. Many of his titles are still popular and widely read today. Views: 289
The bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano — Krakatoa.
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa — the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster — was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round the planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all — in view of today's new political climate — the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.
Simon Winchester's long experience in the world wandering as well as his knowledge of history and geology give us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event as he brings it telling back to life. Views: 288
The definitive 10-volume set of Robert E. Howard's weird fiction and poetry (with all texts meticulously restored to the original versions as published in Weird Tales and other magazines) continues with volume 6, GARDENS OF FEAR! This collection of classic Howard begins with the Conan story "Queen of the Black Coast," and also includes "The Haunter of the Ring," "The Garden of Fear," "The Devil in Iron," "The Voices Waken Memory," "The People of the Black Circle," and "A Witch Shall Be Born."** Views: 288
Tracing an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, the bestselling and "virtuosic" (The Wall Street Journal) writer explores the past and future of Christianity"What a wondrous work! This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage will have you wondering whether we should all embark on such a journey, either of the body, the soul or, as in Egan's case, both." —Cokie RobertsMoved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the biggest stories of our time: the collapse of religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and makes his way overland via the alpine peaks... Views: 288
Mars Confidential is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Howard Browne is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Howard Browne then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. Views: 288
This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries’ mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org. Views: 287
An excerpt from the Introduction: A natural pause appears to have come in the career of Mr. H .G. Wells. After so many years of travelling up and down through time and space, familiarizing himself with all the various parts of the solar system and presenting himself imaginatively at all the various geological epochs, from the Stone Age to the end of the world, he has for good and all domesticated himself in his own planet and point of time. This gradual process of slowing down, so to speak, had been evident from the moment of his first appearance. The most obvious fact about his romances of science, considered as a series, is that each one more nearly approached the epoch in which we live, and the realities of this epoch. From the year A.D. 802, 701, witnessed in his first romance by the Time Traveller, we found ourselves at last in the presence of a decade only so remote as that of the war which has now befallen Europe. A similar tendency in his novels has been equally marked. The possibilities of science and socialism have received a diminishing attention relatively beside the possibilities of human reaction to science and socialism. It is individual men and women, and the motives and personalities of individual men and women, which now concern him. Still retaining the entire planet as the playground of his ideas, still upholding science and socialism as his essential heroes, he has been driven by experience to approach these things through human nature as it is. In a recent essay he has told us not to expect any more dramatic novelties: for the present at any rate our business must be to make science and socialism feel at home. Whether or not this may stand as a general diagnosis of our epoch, it is a remarkable confession with regard to his own place in it. For it signifies nothing less than that he has reached the limit of his own circle of ideas and finished his own pioneering, and that his work for the future will be to relate the discoveries of his youth with human experience. He is no longer a "new voice"; his work belongs, for good or ill, to history and literature, and he presents himself from this time forward as a humanist. Views: 287
After a young Noah Spence survives a tragic car accident, he is left with a condition: he can never fall asleep. Set in Illinois, beautiful Elizabeth and Noah go through the hardships of junior high school: unpopularity and bullying. They meet as adults in New York City madly in love. But can the two lovers break their silence and confess their love for each other?Gish Heart is in trouble. At 35, her small public relations firm has dwindled to nothing. She has a mortgage, a car, debt and a penchant for independence. Now, she is forced to seek work in the "real world," say what she's "supposed" to say and do what she's "supposed" to do. She is not pleased. What's more, she's pretty sure she's falling for her recruiter, a friend from college and a sympathetic listening ear. Views: 286
Heaven to Betsy: Betsy Ray is loving every minute of freshman year at Deep Valley High-with new and old friends all around her...not to mention boys! But most intriguing of all is the one she and her best friend, Tacy, dub "the Tall Dark Stranger."
Betsy in Spite of Herself: Betsy is at the center of every activity as a Deep Valley High sophomore and suddenly, thanks to her old friend Tib, she's offered a golden opportunity for glorious transformation. But will she impress the special boy by becoming dramatic, mysterious Betsye or would she be better off just being Betsy in spite of herself? Views: 286
In the immediate sense, this long, eventful and agonizingly suspenseful novel shows what fear, secret hidden fear, can do to even one of those seeming heroes, a war lover. In the longer view, however, this may come to be regarded as the great and ultimate anti-war novel of our time. The scene is an American bomber base in England sometime before D-Day. The characters are the crew of a Flying Fortress named The Body, particularly the pilot, Buzz Marrow, and the co-pilot, Boman, who tells the story of his worship of Marrow, and of how his hero succumbed, on their final crucial mission, to the fatal weakness with which he camouflaged his fear—his secret delight in annihilation. Boman also tells the story of the English girl he loved (and Mr. Hersey's many admirers will note a new tenderness and passion in these scenes), and of her fateful intervention in Marrow's collapse. Both narrative lines flow together and are superbly united in the sustained and powerful... Views: 285
The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story (1903) by George Cary Eggleston. "The road was a winding, twisting track as it threaded its way through a stretch of old field pines. The land was nearly level at that point, and quite unobstructed, so that there was not the slightest reason that ordinary intelligence could discover for the roadway\'s devious wanderings. It might just as well have run straight through the pine lands. But in Virginia people were never in a hurry. They had all of leisure that well-settled and perfectly self-satisfied ways of life could bring to a people whose chief concern it was to live uprightly and happily in that state of existence into which it had pleased God to call them. What difference could it make to a people so minded, whether the journey to the Court-house—the centre and seat of county activities of all kinds—were a mile or two longer or shorter by reason of meaningless curves in the road, or by reason of a lack of them?..." Views: 285
The novel tells the story of a journey to the moon by the impecunious businessman Mr Bedford and the brilliant but eccentric scientist Dr Cavor. On arrival, Bedford and Cavor find the moon inhabited by a race of moon-folk the two call "Selenites." The novel can also be read as a critique of prevailing political opinions from the turn of the century, particularly of imperialism. Views: 285
A hotel night auditor must withstand the horrors of Nyarlathotep.A hotel night auditor must withstand the demanding horrors of the ultimate bad guest: Nyarlathotep. The Black Pharaoh is well known for inducing madness in his victims, by any means necessary: prank-ordering pizzas, endless phone calls, and threats of bad online reviews are just the tip of the iceberg... Views: 284
