Harsh Country, Hard Times
Title | Harsh Country, Hard Times PDF eBook |
Author | Janet Williams Pollard |
Publisher | Texas A&M University Press |
Total Pages | 274 |
Release | 2011-09-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1603444793 |
Clayton Wheat Williams—West Texas oilman, rancher, civic leader, veteran of the Great War, and avocational historian—was a risk taker, who both reflected and molded the history of his region. His life spanned a dynamic period in Texas history when automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons, electricity replaced steam power in the oilfields, and barren and virtually worthless ranch land became valuable for the oil and gas under its surface. The setting for Williams’s story, like that of his father before him, is Fort Stockton in the rugged Trans-Pecos region of Texas. As a youngster accompanying his father on surveying trips through the land, and subsequently as a cadet at Texas A&M, he developed a toughness that served him well in France and Flanders. His letters home provide an unusually nuanced picture of what life was like for an American officer in Europe during the Great War. After the war, he returned home, where he taught himself petroleum geology—so effectively that he picked the site of what would become in 1928 the deepest producing oil well in the world. With his brother, he mapped the structure of what later became the Fort Stockton oil and gas field, and he went on to hammer out a successful career in the boom and bust cycles of the West Texas oil industry. On the civic front, Williams served for fourteen years as a Pecos County commissioner, and he held offices in a number of social and civic organizations. Imbued with a deep love for the history of his region, he wrote (with the editorial help of historian Ernest Wallace at Texas Tech University) Texas’ Last Frontier: Fort Stockton and the Trans-Pecos, 1861–1895, published by Texas A&M University Press in 1982. Nonetheless, by some of his neighbors he may be best remembered for his role in drying up the town’s famous Comanche Springs by pumping water feeding the spring’s aquifer to irrigate his and others’ farms west of town. Williams left behind a treasure trove of letters, personal papers and writings, and interviews with his family, helping document in rich detail the history of an unforgiving land as well as what life was like during a pivotal period of American history. These materials, which form the core of the present manuscript, reveal a life that made a difference in the economy and history of the region and the nation at large.
Harsh Times
Title | Harsh Times PDF eBook |
Author | Mario Vargas Llosa |
Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Total Pages | 242 |
Release | 2021-11-23 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0374601240 |
The true story of Guatemala’s political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.
Hard Times
Title | Hard Times PDF eBook |
Author | Charles Dickens |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 392 |
Release | 1854 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Welcome to Hard Times
Title | Welcome to Hard Times PDF eBook |
Author | E.L. Doctorow |
Publisher | Random House |
Total Pages | 226 |
Release | 2010-11-17 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0307762971 |
Here is E. L. Doctorow’s debut novel, a searing allegory of frontier life that sets the stage for his subsequent classics. Hard Times is the name of a town in the barren hills of the Dakota Territory. To this town there comes one day one of the reckless sociopaths who wander the West to kill and rape and pillage. By the time he is through and has ridden off, Hard Times is a smoking ruin. The de facto mayor, Blue, takes in two survivors of the carnage–a boy, Jimmy, and a prostitute, Molly, who has suffered unspeakably–and makes them his provisional family. Blue begins to rebuild Hard Times, welcoming new settlers, while Molly waits with vengeance in her heart for the return of the outlaw. Praise for Welcome to Hard Times “A forceful, credible story of cowardice and evil.”—The Washington Post “We are caught up with these people as real human beings.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Dramatic and exciting.”—The New York Times “Terse and powerful.”—Newsweek “A taut, bloodthirsty read.”—The Times Literary Supplement “A superb piece of fiction.”—The New Republic
Hard Times in Paradise
Title | Hard Times in Paradise PDF eBook |
Author | David Colfax |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 193 |
Release | 2014-07-01 |
Genre | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY |
ISBN | 9780446599177 |
From the authors of the renowned classic Homeschooling for Excellence, here is the extraordinary story of a family who "went back to the land" to build their own home, raise their own food, and home-educate their children--with astonishing results. The Colfaxes have appeared on Good Morning America, Donahue, and other television and radio programs. Photographs.
Good Economics for Hard Times
Title | Good Economics for Hard Times PDF eBook |
Author | Abhijit V. Banerjee |
Publisher | PublicAffairs |
Total Pages | 398 |
Release | 2019-11-12 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1541762878 |
The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day. Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it. Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable. In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
What On Earth Have I Done?
Title | What On Earth Have I Done? PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Fulghum |
Publisher | Macmillan |
Total Pages | 320 |
Release | 2008-10-14 |
Genre | Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | 1429919833 |
Robert Fulghum's new book begins with a question we've all asked ourselves: "What on Earth have I done?" As Fulghum finds out, the answer is never easy and, almost always, surprising. For the last couple of years, Fulghum has been traveling the world - from Seattle to the Moab Desert to Crete - looking for a few fellow travelers interested in thinking along with him as he delights in the unexpected: trick-or-treating with your grandchildren dressed like a large rabbit, pots of daffodils blooming in mid-November, a view of the earth from outer space, the mysterious night sounds of the desert, every man's trip to a department store to buy socks, the raucous all-night long feast that is Easter in Greece, the trials and tribulations of plumbing problems and the friendship one can strike up with someone who doesn't share the same language. What on Earth Have I Done? is an armchair tour of everyday life as seen by Robert Fulghum, one of America's great essayists, a man who has two feet planted firmly on the earth, one eye on the heavens and, at times, a tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Fulghum writes to his fellow travelers, with a sometimes light heart, about the deep and vexing mysteries of being alive and says, "This is my way of bringing the small boat of my life within speaking distance of yours. Hello..."