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

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

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. ""