Search results for ""Author Ronald Weber""

As our interest in space continues to grow, the cultural effects of space exploration become important. In Seeing Earth, Ronald Weber focuses on the literary response to this new frontier, examining an area of contemporary expression that has remained until now virtually untouched. The author surveys what has been written about space exploration and calls attention to its dominant use as a means of deflecting attention back to earth and earthly concerns. As Norman Cousins states, the \u201cmost significant achievement of that lunar voyage (Apollo 11) was not that man set foot on the Moon, but that he set eyes on Earth.\u201d This timely study includes the responses of writers, scientists, historians, theologians, philosophers, and those who have experienced space first hand – the astronauts. Here we find, of course, Tom Wolfe and The Right Stuff, Carl Sagan, James Michener, and Norman Mailer. But Weber also discusses Oriana Fallaci, Ben Bova, Ken Kesey, Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, and others as they offer a literary embodiment of this newest and perhaps ultimate phase of American journeying, the newest New World, the darkest frontier. Weber finds that in the first quarter-century of the space age our writers have been more attentive to the familiar attractions of earth than the mysteries of outer space, paradoxically in their accounts of space returning us to earth. Seeing Earth is offered, however, as a preliminary report. The era of the space shuttle, with the promise of routine journeys in space, may well alter the response of writers. We may come to see ourselves at home in space. But so far the deepest sympathies of our writers have been directed to the origin of space rockets more than their exotic destinations. Weber shows us that our literary accounts of space journeys have given us new instruction about earth and earthly life.

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The Lisbon Route tells of the extraordinary World War II transformation of Portugal's tranquil port city into the great escape hatch of Nazi Europe. Royalty, celebrities, diplomats, fleeing troops, and ordinary citizens desperately slogged their way across France and Spain to reach the neutral nation. Here the exiles found peace and plenty, though they often faced excruciating delays and uncertainties before they could book passage on ships or planes to their final destinations. As well as offering freedom from war, Lisbon provided spies, smugglers, relief workers, military figures, and adventurers with an avenue into the conflict and its opportunities. Ronald Weber traces the engaging stories of many of these colorful transients as they took pleasure in the city's charm and benign climate, its ample food and drink, its gambling casino and Atlantic beaches. Yet an ever-present shadow behind the gaiety was the fragile nature of Portuguese neutrality, which at any moment the Axis or Allies might choose to end.

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