Search results for ""Author Tom""

Everybody knows better. Yet from the days of ancient Greece, people have hurried their steps as they passed by—or, heaven forbid, walked through—a cemetery after dark. Indeed, over the centuries there have been countless stories of ghost encounters at churchyards, secular cemeteries, ancient burial grounds, and isolated graves. The second edition of Haunted Cemeteries exhumes more than 200 haunted happenings from restless graveyard ghosts in cemeteries across each of the fifty states and Washington, DC, including: ·Nevermore!: At least four entities, including the spectre of Edgar Allan Poe, haunt Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore. And just who is the mysterious Man in Black that shows up every year on January 19, the writer’s birthday?. ·The Resurrection Apparition: A “hitchhiking ghost” outside Justice, Illinois, vanishes from the car she’s riding in as it passes Resurrection Cemetery—earning her the nickname Resurrection Mary. ·The Queen of Voodoo: The restless spirit of Marie Laveau, the nineteenth-century Queen of Voodoo, is said to appear in New Orleans’s St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in the form of a gigantic black crow or a phantom black hellhound—when she’s not walking through the French Quarter.

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Few people would want to test their mettle in an ice-encrusted boat with an Arctic explorer, sail the Straits of Magellan with Joshua Slocum, or watch with Owen Chase as an angry whale sends his ship to the bottom, thousands of miles from the nearest land. But it's quite another thing to read these true accounts while settled into a favorite chair. Slocum and Chase persevered in the face of travails that would have given Job pause. Their stoic accounts are stronger and more dramatic for their total lack of affection, their frankness, and their lack of ego. Their gripping stories are custom-made for the imaginative reader who seeks adventure in a more controlled environment, safe and warm, and well fed - civilized readers with their armchairs anchored firmly to the living room floor. Rich in drama and history, here are stories that will entertain, inform, and inspire--enduring stories that have attracted generations of readers.

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In the bestselling traditions of James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler comes this stunning debut novel - soon to be a major motion picture starring Casey Affleck and directed by Ridley Scott!

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As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV. There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player. Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan “the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best."

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Eric Hoffer was unknown in the American literary and philosophical scene in 1951 when he published his first book, The True Believer. Almost overnight, the San Francisco dockworker became a public figure, helped by a 1956 profile in Look magazine that identified Hoffer as "Ike's Favorite Author"—elevating this blue-collar working man to the level of President Eisenhower's bedside table. Recognized as a highly original thinker, he became known as the "Longshoreman Philosopher." In this book, Tom Bethell paints a new, insightful portrait of this American original. He draws much of his material from Hoffer's personal papers—acquired by the Hoover Institution in 2000—and interviews with those who knew the man, as well as his own interviews with Hoffer, conducted shortly before his death. The result is a detailed portrait of an enigmatic philosopher who was interested in probing the depths of human behavior and discovering the motivations behind the twentieth century's wars and revolutions.Hoffer's life divides into two roughly equal parts. The first part is from birth to his move to San Francisco after Pearl Harbor. The second is his life in San Francisco. Before Pearl Harbor, Hoffer's life is documented only by what he said or wrote. His best friend, Lili Osborne, summarized the difficulty: "all we know about Eric's early life is what he told us." There is a wealth of information on his later life, however, and Bethell reveals it in great detail. He tells of Hoffer's emergence as a public figure in the 1950s, a period he referred to as a "paradise of lost innocence." He details the whirlwind that was Hoffer's life in the 1960s—a decade notorious for attitudes that Hoffer grew to detest—when he became a well-known figure on the national stage. And he provides an insightful look at Hoffer's gradual withdrawal from public life until his death in 1983.

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Inspiring collection of three centuries of angling stories and art Gems from the great angling writers, including Chris Yates, G. E. M. Skues, Izaak Walton, Dame Julia Berners, Arthur Ransome, Nick Lyons, Dave Hughes, Ed Engle, and Paul Schullery A perfect gift for the discerning fly fisher Salmon fishing, trout fishing, flies, perfect days, and the fish that got away"

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How can external actors-governments, regional organizations, the United Nations, financial institutions, nongovernmental organizations-affect the process of democratic transition and consolidation? In Beyond Sovereignty, leading scholars and policy experts examine the experiences of a variety of Latin American nations and the relevant characteristics of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations to draw lessons that can be applied globally. The contributors begin by discussing evolving views of sovereignty, democracy, and regional security. They review the past efforts and present capacity of various international organizations-the United Nations, the Organization of American States, external financial institutions, and transnational nongovernmental organizations-to further efforts to deepen democracy. They also offer case studies of how these organizations related to democratic development in Chile, El Salvador, Haiti, and Peru. The last section applies lessons learned to two problematic regimes: Cuba and Mexico. This timely and useful collection will be of interest to all who study democratic transition and consolidation, comparative politics, Latin American politics, international organizations, and international relations more generally. Contributors: Domingo E. Acevedo, Larry Diamond, Jorge I. Dominguez, Denise Dresser, Stephanie J. Eglinton, Patricia Weiss Fagen, Tom Farer, David P. Forsythe, Alicia Frohmann, Claudio Grossman, Anita Isaacs, Anthony P. Maingot, Joan M. Nelson, David Scott Palmer, Karen L. Remmer, Kathryn A. Sikkink, and Fernando R. Teson. "Concern over democracy's uncertain prospects inspired the project that culminates in this volume. Two assumptions shaped the collective effort of its contributors: one, that external actors can contribute to the defense and enhancement of democracy, and two, that tolerance for such external action has increased dramatically-even measures that would once have been widely condemned as impermissible intervention are acquiring a remarkable aura of legitimacy. An increase in tolerance is least marked, however, for unilateral action of a coercive nature, which in the Western Hemisphere usually means action that the Unites States has taken on its own initiative."-from the Introduction

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Black Country Chronicles is a fascinating and multi-faceted narrative of twentieth-century life in the Black Country. Tom Larkin and other members of the Black Country Memories Club have long been determined that the way of life, sacrifices and hardships, and daily activities should not be allowed to be forgotten, and this book achieves their aim. Tom Larkin looks at the Black Country from the working-class point of view and records the significant contribution which these people made to the economic stability of the country as a whole. He neither romanticises nor exaggerates working-class life at this time, but faithfully brings to the fore the harsh living conditions, bad housing, polluted environment, low standards of hygiene and tough discipline which dominated people's lives. This will provide a fascinating insight into the Black Country of yesteryear and a valuable record of the reality of life for generations to come.

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During the war against terrorism, the US government had taken on extraordinary powers. Now that the war was won, elements of the government had no intention of giving those powers up, and the country was on the verge of civil war.

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