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Jeb, a lecturer at Harvard, meets a mysterious pilot with a map who
is murdered, the eyes sucked out of his skull while he is still
alive. Jeb, shaken by the horror and wanting no more of it, is
asked by the faculty at Harvard to travel to Colombia in search of
ancient emeralds. In an Indian dialect, the map tells of their
secret location. A Monster guards this secret for which the eyes of
humans are sacrificed. General Junco, his contact person, finds
refuge with an obscure woman, while his red-headed wife Lourdes,
once a great beauty, is served nightly by a shadow lover. Jeb is
provided a house in which to live with a housekeeper, Lucy, who
remains strangely distant. His lady back home, Courtney, teaches at
Sarah Lawrence. Lola, the beautiful secretary of General Junco,
commands his attention, providing a momentary distraction from the
horror that awaits him. An assassin has been sent to Colombia by
Geneva emerald dealers, who, though leaving many bodies, is never
seen. Jeb guesses the source of the Monster's emeralds, a dark
rainforest where Indians have been tortured for centuries, and
again enslaved and murdered during the nineteen hundreds by the
rubber barons, a horror called the Devil's Paradise. Lucy, the
housekeeper, follows him. She is caught by thugs and deposited
among the rotting corpses to await the sucking out of her eyes.
From nowhere, the unseen assassin appears and frees her. She finds
Jeb in the rainforest and together they elude the Monster, escape
warring Indians, the descendants of those who were tortured,
survive an electric eel, avoid the drug lords, and finally fall
through the ground into a cave filled with skeletons, and
gold-and-emerald artifacts, from which there appears to be no
escape. Only after a cruel twist of fate is the shocking truth of
this green horror revealed.
Haunted by the horror of death, Kiltie Hartley emerges from a
troubled past. He is sent to an Episcopalian school in the
tidewater of eastern Virginia. Into the conventional society
celebrated by prep school he does not fit. His final year at a
public high school is darkened by deepening alienation. The shadow
of death which swallowed him up during his early life catches up
with him again the following year in college. Like a snake, the
darkness of death coils itself around him, suffocating him in its
grip. Resistance-not wanting to be forced to do anything by
anyone-pitches him into another direction. Far from home, the boy
travels, physically and emotionally. He survives. Is that all? No.
He survives in style
This book tells a true story. An airplane crash sends a dying pilot
to the hospital. From death and darkness, he rises to brilliant
colour, entering upon a Romantic passion that may only be described
as profound. He defies injury, surviving, always surviving, winning
the companionship of ladies, until he meets one who gives him an
offer he can't refuse The narrative includes the crafting of poems,
too, for we cannot have love without poems.
A true story The world in which the child finds himself is one of
vivid and wondrous beauty, and horrifying ugliness, too, that
thrills with its suggestion of evil. The father, old enough to be a
granddaddy, prides himself a self-made man, likes to dress well and
doesn't take crap. The younger mother, a former school teacher, can
be teasingly friendly: at other times, as coldly indifferent as
ice. School proves difficult. Neither parent is ever satisfied, not
even with passing. By the fourth grade, the boy is confined to the
principal's office every afternoon. And on the bus, required to sit
in plain sight on the heater by the driver, this for fighting.
Military school faces him at age eleven. Fun with girls leads to an
obsession with sex and daring escapades. However, the cadet's
growing sense of abandonment imposes a death sentence upon him: he
envisions a hanging. A shadow looming, this hanging spells trouble.
To parents who are stunned, outraged, and deeply saddened he
returns. The child survives, most of him does; we do not leave
childhood without sacrificing something. At the very end, he is
saved in a way that is not unexpected, yet still astonishing
Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the
pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.
Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the
pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.
This sweeping survey constitutes the first comprehensive treatment
of the men and women who have been chosen to represent Illinois in
the United States Senate from 1818 to the present day. David Kenney
and Robert E. Hartley underscore nearly two centuries of Illinois
history with these biographical and political portraits, compiling
an incomparably rich resource for students, scholars, teachers,
journalists, historians, politicians, and any Illinoisan interested
in the state's senatorial heritage. Originally published as An
Uncertain Tradition: U.S. Senators From Illinois 1818-2003, this
second edition brings readers up to date with new material on Paul
Simon, Richard Durbin, and Peter Fitzgerald, as well as completely
new sections on Roland Burris, Barack Obama, and Illinois's newest
senator, Mark Kirk. This fresh and careful study of the shifting
set of political issues Illinois's senators encountered over time
is illuminated by the lives of participants in the politics of
choice and service in the Senate. Kenney and Hartley offer incisive
commentary on the quality of Senate service in each case, as well
as timeline graphs relating to the succession of individuals in
each of the two sequences of service, the geographical distribution
of senators within the state, and the variations in party voting
for Senate candidates. Rigorously documented and supremely
readable, this convenient reference volume is enhanced by portraits
of many of the senators.
The election year of 1948 remains to this day one of the most
astonishing in U.S. political history. During this first general
election after World War II, Americans looked to their governments
for change. As the battle for the nation's highest office came to a
head in Illinois, the state was embroiled in its own partisan
showdowns--elections that would prove critical in the course of
state and national history.
In "Battleground 1948," Robert E. Hartley offers the first
comprehensive chronicle of this historic election year and its
consequences, which still resonate today. Focusing on the races
that ushered Adlai Stevenson, Paul Douglas, and Harry Truman into
office--the last by the slimmest of margins--"Battleground 1948"
details the pivotal events that played out in the state of
Illinois, from the newspaper wars in Chicago to tragedy in the mine
at Centralia.
In addition to in-depth revelations on the saga of the American
election machine in 1948, Hartley probes the dark underbelly of
Illinois politics in the 1930s and 1940s to set the stage,
spotlight key party players, and expose the behind-the-scenes
influences of media, money, corruption, and crime. In doing so, he
draws powerful parallels between the politics of the past and those
of the present. Above all, "Battleground 1948 "tells the story of
grassroots change writ large on the American political
landscape--change that helped a nation move past an era of conflict
and depression, and forever transformed Illinois and the U.S.
government.
"Death Underground: ""The Centralia and West Frankfort Mine
Disasters" examines two of the most devastating coal mine disasters
in United States history since 1928. In two southern Illinois towns
only forty miles apart, explosions killed 111 men at the Centralia
No. 5 mine in 1947 and 119 men at the New Orient No. 2 mine in West
Frankfort in 1951. Robert E. Hartley and David Kenney explain the
causes of the accidents, identify who was to blame, and detail the
emotional impact the disasters had on the survivors, their
families, and their communities.Politics at the highest level of
Illinois government played a critical role in the conditions that
led to the accidents. Hartley and Kenney address how safety was
compromised when inspection reports were widely ignored by state
mining officials and mine company supervisors. Highlighted is the
role of Driscoll Scanlan, a state inspector at Centralia, who
warned of an impending disaster but whose political enemies shifted
the blame to him, ruining his career. Hartley and Kenney also
detail the New Orient No. 2 mine explosion, the attempts at rescue,
and the resulting political spin circulated by labor, management,
and the state bureaucracy. They outline the investigation, the
subsequent hearings, and the efforts in Congress to legislate
greater mine safety. Hartley and Kenney include interviews with the
survivors, a summary of the investigative records, and an analysis
of the causes of both mine accidents. They place responsibility for
the disasters on individual mine owners, labor unions, and state
officials, providing new interpretations not previously presented
in the literature. Augmented by twenty-nine illustrations, the
volume alsocovers the history, culture, and ethnic pluralism of
coal mining in Illinois and the United States. ""
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