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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The great American exodus to Paris after World War I included not only writers and artists but journalists. They came by the score, the raw and the accomplished, and in their baggage most carried the dream of eventually becoming poets, short-story writers, or novelists. Meanwhile Paris offered them an overwhelming advantage (coupled with a favorable postwar exchange rate and freedom from Prohibition) by providing jobs that enabled them to remain abroad for extended periods. With the war, American news activity had shifted from London to Paris. The city was now — as one of the arriving newspapermen called it — "the centre of American journalism in Europe," with jobs available on English-language newspapers and magazines, with news services and the foreign bureaus of American publications, and as freelancers of various sorts of writing for a Europe-hungry audience back home. News of Paris recaptures the colorful, often zany world of Paris-American journalists during the glory days of the expatriate period. It does so by concentrating on the lives of such figures as Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber, Henry Miller, Elliot Paul, William L. Shirer, Dorothy Thompson, Janet Flanner, and Eric Sevareid, and on the life of the major newspapers, including the Herald and the Tribune. Others populating its pages include Harold Stearns, Paul Scott Mowrer, Bill Bird, Vincent Sheean, Waverley Root, Eugene Jolas, Martha Foley, Whit Burnett, Ned Calmer, and A. J. Liebling. Ronald Weber aims to add journalists to their rightful place in the story of Americans in Paris at the fabled time when, as Gertrude Stein said, Paris was where the twentieth century was. But in producing this charming, delightfully entertaining book, Mr. Weber has given panache to his purpose. With 8 pages of black-and-white photographs and drawings.

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“Even those who can’t tell a Royal Coachman from a Wooly Bugger will have fun.” —Publishers WeeklyFly fishermen tend to be a peaceful bunch. But suddenly the sleepy, northern Michigan town of Ossning, home of the trout-packed Borchard River, has a killer in its midst. Charlie Orr, a solitary fisherman of advanced years, who spends his summers camping in a state forest campground, is brutally murdered one night while reading by lamplight in his tent. Charlie was known by all, but did he know too much? Shocked fellow anglers quickly set about investigating their own theories.In Ronald Weber’s third fly-fishing mystery, state lottery winner Donald Fitzgerald, on leave from his beat as a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, once again joins forces with his girlfriend, Department of Natural Resources officer Mercy Virdon. Together, they must uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of their old friend before tragedy strikes again.Perfectly capturing what happens when a grisly crime disturbs the serenity of small-town life Riverwatcher is a classic and entertaining whodunit. Fitzgerald and Mercy’s investigation to discover the deadly secret leads to a startling revelation that takes everyone by surprise. Weber expertly weaves his riverine plot, creating a great yarn for fly fishermen and mystery lovers alike.

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A bumptious narrative history of American newspapermen in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, a time when serious journalism still went hand in hand with relative poverty, good times, and a carefree spirit cultivated by eccentric personalities. An absorbing and delightful book.

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