Average customer rating:
- Thomas Perry does it again
- Compelling, textured thriller in Adirondacks
- A wonderful series!
- Exciting from start to finish...
- Archetypal adventure, second chances
|
Vanishing Act
Thomas Perry
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| African American
| Asian American
| Classics
| Collections & Readers
| Drama
| General
| Hispanic
| History & Criticism
| Humor
| Jewish American
| Letters & Correspondence
| Native American
| Poetry
| Short Stories
| Women Writers
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Perry, Thomas
| ( P )
| Authors, A-Z
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Dance for the Dead (Jane Whitfield Novel)
-
The Face-Changers (Jane Whitefield Novels)
-
Blood Money
-
Shadow Woman (Jane Whitfield Novel)
-
Death Benefits
ASIN: 0679435360
Release Date: 1995-01-31 |
Book Description
JANE WHITEFIELD is . . .
. . . in the one-woman business of helping the desperate disappear. Thanks to her membership in the Wolf Clan of the Seneca tribe, she can fool any pursuer, cover any trail, and then provide her clients with new identities, complete with authentic paperwork. Jane knows all the tricks, ancient and modern; in fact, she has invented several of them herself. But when Jane opens a door out of the world for an attractive fugitive named John Felker, she walks into a trap that will take all her heritage and cunning to escape. . . .
"A unique heroine, an ultracompetent woman attuned to the ancient ways of her ancestors and to the harsh realities of the modern, bureaucratic world."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"A compelling, multifaceted protagonist. Whitefield is as tough as Sam Spade, as tender as Jo in Little Women and as resourceful as Robinson Crusoe's Friday."
--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Strong-willed . . . [A] most singular creation."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Entertainingly resourceful."
--The New York Times
"One sharp and tough cookie."
--Detroit News
From the Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Thomas Perry does it again.......2006-03-19
Perry manages to continiue to surprise you in the different ways he has Jane do some very tricky things to keep her friend and herself alive. Jane uses all her innate wisdom and makes use of most of her contacts to make everything turn out for the best.
Compelling, textured thriller in Adirondacks.......2005-12-04
While learning some interesting facts ("Adirondacks" is Iroquois for "bark-eaters," a derogatory term for ineffective hunters, and George Washington ordered assorted massacres of Indian villages), I found this novel consistently engaging. The reviews suggesting the heroine's "gullibility" forget the difference between reading a novel and living an experience. Perry isn't interested in tricking his readers, but inviting them to see and experience the world as his heroine does. All in all, she's quicker to figure out the shape of a complex story than that reviewer would have been, and this novel's merits don't depend on "figuring it out" anyway. If a mythic heroince can be credible, this one is.
A wonderful series!.......2005-09-21
Vanishing Act is the first in a series of five books about Jane Whitefield, an Indian guide who will take someone from where there are people who want to kill them -- to where they are safe. She provides people with a new identity and a new life. John Felker is looking for just that. He is a former cop turned accountant who is being set up as an embezzler. Someone is skimming money from the accounting firm's customers and depositing it into an account in John's name. There is also an open contract on his life, so he needs to disappear.
The book is written in two distinctly separate parts. The first part is about how Jane makes someone disappear. We follow Jane and John cross country as they are being chased by the men who are after John. We are introduced to people along the way who help make their escape possible by providing safe places to stay or creating fake documentation or getting them transportation. When Jane finally gets John safe, the story takes a new twist. The people we have met along their journey are being murdered. Someone has been tracking them and Jane fears for John's safety. She has to go back to save him before the killers find him too.
The Native American culture and history were very interesting. Jane uses her training and skills in tracking and in creating weapons from items she finds in the woods. I thought of a few questions along the way that I wanted answers to and was a bit disappointed when those answers, found late in the book, would have cleared everything up quite early. Surely Jane is better at this than I am and should have asked them herself. But then we wouldn't have had a story, right?
Armchair Interviews says: Definitely pick Vanishing Act and up the next one in this unique series.
Exciting from start to finish..........2005-05-14
Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry is the first book I've read in the Jane Whitefield series, and was a most pleasant surprise. Instead of dealing with a cop, a PI or a bounty hunter, Jane Whitefield is a half-Indian (from the Seneca Tribe) who serves as a guide to help people "disappear." She uses her native skills to help those who are trying to flee from an abusive spouse or an unsavory past.
In Vanishing Act, an ex-cop turned accountant, John Felker, is being framed by unknown persons and there is a contract out on his life. He seeks out Jane, whom he has heard about by word of mouth. But the men pursuing Felker are right on his tail, and Jane must work hard to give them the slip. But just as Jane thinks everything is finally under control, two bombshells are dropped on her, and things are not as they seem.
One thing that I really enjoyed about this book is the background on Native Americans that Vanishing Act provides. Jane is from upstate NY, and there is much about the tribes from that area-especially before and during the Revolution. Even when she travels to California, we are given information about the California Indian tribes. In this respect, Perry is a lot like Tony Hillerman and his series of Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn mysteries.
But while there is much to like about Vanishing Act, I thought the plot at times completely implausible. It's hard to believe that when Jane finally identifies the murderer, she would chase him up into the Adirondack Mountains without notifying anyone of where she was going, calling the police, and even leaving a message with someone as to the identify of the killer. It was just a bit beyond belief.
Still, I thoroughly enjoyed Vanishing Act, and am planning to read Shadow Woman next.
Archetypal adventure, second chances.......2005-04-29
I thoroughly enjoyed this well-crafted suspense novel and the series it kicks off. The resourceful Jane Whitfield helps people whose lives have been damaged past any possibility of salvaging leave those lives behind and start over with a new identity. Given that this was the motivation that brought many settlers first to the New World, and later to the American West, this is the ultimate American dream. In an increasingly documented world, this is becoming less and less possible. Still, it is fascinating to watch Jane at work.
Book Description
The late Perry Miller once stated, "I have been compelled to insist that the mind of man is the basic factor in human history," and his study of the mind in America has shaped the thought of three decades of scholars.
The fifteen essays here collected--several of them previously unpublished--address themselves to facets of the American consciousness and to their expression in literature from the time of the Cambridge Agreement to the Nobel Prize acceptance speeches of Hemingway and Faulkner. A companion volume to Errand into the Wilderness, its general theme is one adumbrated in Mr. Miller's two-volume masterpiece, The New England Mind--the thrust of civilization into the vast, empty continent and its effect upon Americans' concept of themselves as "nature's nation."
The essays first concentrate on Puritan covenant theology and its gradual adaptation to changing conditions in America: the decline in zeal for a "Bible commonwealth," the growth of trade and industy, and the necessity for coexisting with large masses of unchurched people. As the book progresses, the emphasis shifts from religion to the philosophy of nature to the development of an original literature, although Mr. Miller is usually analyzing simultaneously all three aspects of the American quest for self-identity. In the final essays, he shows how the forces that molded the self-conscious articulateness of the early New Englanders still operate in the work of contemporary American writers.
The introduction to this collection is by Kenneth Murdock, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University, who, with Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot Morison, accomplished what has been called "one of the great historical re-evaluations of this generation."
Customer Reviews:
A Consensus Approach to the Ideology of Early Puritan New England.......2006-09-06
Perry Miller (1905-1963) was one of the most important of the consensus historians of the middle part of the twentieth century and his work on the American Puritans was required reading for all students of history when I attended graduate school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century" was one of his masterworks, exploring the intellectual history of the Puritans through a deep investigation of the thought of the Puritan divines. In this book, as well as its successor, "The New England Mind: From Colony to Province" (Harvard University Press, 1953), Miller asserted a single mind for America that could be traced to the Puritan belief system. Even while there was an "American mentality" it was tormented by self-doubt and a certain schizophrenia. He suggested that the spiritual unrest present among all Americans that may be traced to the early Puritans.
This volume emphasizes the rise of a religious utopian experiment by the Puritans. He finds much of value that the Puritans bequeathed to the United States and suggests that America has always been about noble ideals accepted by all. Miller's consensus interpretation celebrated the long tradition of shared American ideals and values while de-emphasizing conflict. He believed that this made the United States and the people that made it up somehow better than everyone else. Miller questioned the ideas and people who challenged the cherished principles that he saw so well expressed in the writings of Puritan elites, noting in many of them strains of authoritarianism, anarchy, and narrow- and simple-mindedness of all varieties. Much of this approach to the American past in vogue when Miller was involved in his work advocated a basic idealism that he believed was in constant jeopardy from forces of fear, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarianism present in society.
This is an important book, and having recently reread it, I find it still valuable as a statement of Puritan intellectual thought. Its creation of a single mindset, however, is certainly questionable. For instance, the "other" of Puritan society is not represented. What of the dispossessed, minorities of all types, non-Puritans, and women in Miller's recounting of Puritan thought? They are essentially omitted from the story and including their perspectives would certainly have altered Miller's account. His concept of Puritanism was essentially the same one that was offered by the elites of early New England. Nonetheless, this work represents a seminal statement in American historiography and remains worthy of consideration for any student of the subject.
this is a scholarly book, it's good for CHARACTER STUDY.......2005-08-31
A PURITAN MIND is not the normal kind of book one would read about Puritan life in the 1600s, Colonial America, as it pulls more on quotes from religious Puritan documents. You have to already know the history of all the A, B and C-list people in Puritan history to appreciate this book.
I'm a playwright who is focused on a story that crosses into the Puritans in their utopian society in Massachusetts.
A Great Scholarly Achievement.......2005-05-18
Contrary to what a previous reviewer might have you believe, Miller's book is not a propaganda piece advocating Puritan theology; it's an examination of the intellectual history of America, specifically New England in the time of the Puritans. Americans all live under the shadow of the Puritans; to not understand this is simply ignorant. To attack a serious and brilliant scholarly work as though it were right-wing rhetoric is just plain silly.
The Puritans are far too easy to caricature by our modern standards, but are much more complex and interesting to look at from within the context of their own times. Truly, theirs was an amazingly complicated (though logically tortured and ultimately impossible) faith to sustain. Few point out the complexities and contradictions of this faith from such an informed perspective as Miller. In my opinion, this is his masterwork.
I implore readers to avoid the (incorrect) characterization that the modern right-wing ministers (Dobson, Falwell, etc.) are the direct intellectual descendents of such giants as Jonathan Edwards; Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather; and Anne Hutchinson. Theology changes radically over time, and the Protestant Christianity being preached today is radically different than it was in the 1600s. Though the ideological foundation of this "New Jerusalem" called America was built by the Puritans, there are few ministers who now possess their eloquence, their willingness to sacrifice everything for their beliefs, and their dedication to their craft. (Not to mention a VERY rigid doctrine of predestination, much more rigid than you will find virtually anywhere in America today.) I don't advocate their philosophy or theology as something to live by. However, if your desire is to better understand the true Puritans and the history of America, it would be hard to do better than Perry Miller's great work on the subject.
Puritan Historiography.......2003-11-16
In the 20th century the study of the Puritan Origins of New England and the US as a whole, took a new start. Perry Miller was to 'blame' for this. With his studies of Puritans he has shown that Puritans were not as harsh, narrow-minded and alienated from the rest of the world, as was the image throughout the 19th and early 20th century. In fact especially the Puritans were very interested in new scientific and religious developments from the enlightenment onwards. They did however use them for their own purposes. In New England Mind, The Seventeenth Century, Perry Miller goes into this. He tries to explain how the Puritans tried to balance between hart en mind. How they incorporated new scientific developments into their worldview, yet never allowed for any limits on Gods authority and power. Miller succeeds very well in showing how their religion was a whole out of two very different parts and how they as humans found their in our eyes harsh religion consoling. This book only goes into the ideological legacy of the 17th century. If you would like to read more try the sequel; From Colony to Province. This is an excellent book, which opened up an entire era to our modern minds. Even though the ideas put for the floodlight are rather heavy-handed, Miller succeeds in explaining them clearly and even got me to smile.
Book Description
Blackbeard’s extraordinary life of excess during the Golden Age of Piracy ignited a reputation that struck terror into men’s hearts from Virginia to Barbados. Leading a flotilla of ships through the clear waters of the Indies, he left in his wake the image of a "ranting, roaring, swaggering, swearing" sea captain that is still remembered today. Blackbeard’s life on the high seas, chasing wealth, freedom, and power, ended in a bloody battle that ultimately marked a turning point in history.
This book accompanies a multimillion-dollar BBC-National Geographic drama that explores the reality of the man behind the beard. Far from the caricature of films and novels, Blackbeard was a complex character who was as charming as he was ruthless. The atrocities he indulged in, and how they eventually proved to be his undoing, are here explored through a fresh appraisal of surviving contemporary documents. Today, we might associate pirates with peg-legs, parrots and dreamy tropical islands, but the disturbing truth is the stuff of nightmares.
Product Description
Readers of Claudia Roden's masterworks have long been aware of the continuities in Middle Eastern cookery, others have been tantalized by the influence of Islamic cooking on the medieval West, all will rejoice in this new gathering of papers and documents relating to medieval Arab food and cookery. The French scholar, Maxime Rodinson's contributions are legendary, yet have only been seen in translation in Petits Propos Culinaires. We include those already published there, together with the text of his longest paper, 'Recherches sur les documents Arabes relatifs a la cuisine', translated by Barbara Yeomans. The American scholar Charles Perry has been entertaining participants at the Oxford Symposium with regular gleanings from his researches into medieval Arab cookery, and several of his papers are gathered here, together with a new study of fish recipes, and other items previously published in PPC. Subjects include grain foods of the early Turks, rotted condiments, cooking pots, and Kitab al-Tibakhah, a 15th-century cookery book. English study of the subject was first encouraged by Professor Arberry's translation of the 13th-century cookery book Kitab al-Tabikh, published in 1939 in the periodical Islamic Culture. Readers will be pleased to have this more accessible copy, together with an introductory note and revision by Charles Perry. The book is ornamented by a foreword from Claudia Rosen.
Average customer rating:
- So tell me Ned, what MORE could we possibly expect to see after ALL THIS?
- Vanishing Southern Pleasures
|
Silent Speedways of the Carolinas: The Grand National Histories of 29 Former Tracks
Perry Allen Wood
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Racing
| Automotive
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
History of Sports
| Miscellaneous
| Sports
| Subjects
| Books
Motor Sports
| Miscellaneous
| Sports
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sports
| Subjects
| Books
General
| North Carolina
| States
| United States
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
North Carolina
| State & Local
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
South Carolina
| State & Local
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside History Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Sports Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Travel Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Bridge Crew: Growing Up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1940's and 50's
-
The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
ASIN: 0786428171
Release Date: 2007-01-09 |
Product Description
NASCAR held its first Strictly Stock race in Charlotte on June 19, 1949, and, in the following decades, dozens of large and small tracks throughout the Carolinas were home to a major NASCAR event. Called Grand National from 1950-1970, NASCAR's top circuit became the Winston Cup in 1971, and most of the dirt and small tracks were subsequently gutted from the schedule. Although a handful of those speedways tenuously held on through exploding popularity, and an influx of big corporate dollars, the transition to metropolitan markets and super speedways was inevitable. Some of the original tracks, like the North Wilkesboro Motor Speedway, still stand testament to the sport's not-too-distant past. Others, like the Charlotte Speedway, are long gone, leaving only memories and photographs. This is the story of every racetrack in North and South Carolina that held at least one big time race through 1971, but is no longer used for auto racing. Seven are one-race wonders, while others are as much racing legends as the sport's past champions. Chapters cover each track's big time history, from early background through its racing years to its current status. Included are the thrilling tales of the personalities and machines that shaped NASCAR's early days. Statistics chart every track's past winners, records, and wins by make. The 151 photographs give the reader a virtual tour of speedways that are often inaccessible or nonexistent.
Customer Reviews:
So tell me Ned, what MORE could we possibly expect to see after ALL THIS?.......2007-07-26
Mr. Wood has taken a question bounced from one "good ole' boy" to another ever since the the silence grew deafening to those in the racing world, and given it 29 births, lives, and alas, histories, all wrapped up quite nicely in this book.
This is a detailed look inside of what started as the proverbial heart beating of NASCAR as we know it, as well as a first hand account of Perry Allen Wood growing up in the midst of all the greatness that racing and NASCAR had to offer such as these now sadly, silent speedways and the legends that made them famous and vice versa. Perry Wood was so obviously brought alive first hand by the thundering roar of the call "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines" and the smell of the gasoline and rubber, not to mention, the sound of metal against metal, guaranteed to bring any spectator to their feet.
Racing and what it meant and stood for is obviously a part of Perry Allen Wood and deeply ingrained to say the least. If the passion he has shown in this work, "Silent Speedways" is in any way, an insight to Mr. Wood, then it is without doubt from a readers stand point, that his heart lies with racing and related subjects, just as much or higly more so than those of us "square box worshiping, AC addictied, "baby, get me another beer" types. So then...good news for us 'fans',it looks as though those of us that once made the seemingly endless nomadic, pilgrimages to those 29 racetracks that are no more, we'll just have to change our route to detour the nearest bookstore for the latest title from racings newest smoking weapon. AND NO LINE JUMPING, I'M FIRST!
Vanishing Southern Pleasures.......2007-06-05
Anyone interested in racing should purchase this book. Good look at tracks in the south and the part they played in forming todays sport.
Book Description
Three major sections of a great historian's last work: I. The Evangelical Basis; II. The Legal Mentality; III. Science-Theoretical and Applied. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History.
Average customer rating:
- Short but rich in details
|
Disjointed War: Military Operations in Kosovo, 1999
Manufacturer: RAND Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Serbia
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Yugoslavia
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
War & Peace
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
All Amazon Upgrade
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
History
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0833030965 |
Book Description
An examination of the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, with afocus on joint military operations.The 1999 military operation against the Yugoslav Army in Kosovosuggests several areas in which Joint military operations weredeficient. This study examined all aspects of the Kosovo conflict,including its political and historical underpinnings, in an attempt tounderstand these deficiencies and to recommend improvements. Thisdocument--provided in both a classified and unclassified version--isbased on extensive original source documents and interviews with mostof the principal participants, and serves as the definitive Armyrecord on Kosovo. While the primary focus of the research was on U.S.Army involvement, it covered many other aspects of Operation AlliedForce. Topics included NATO objectives in Operation Allied Force, airand ground planning, evolution of the air operation and its effects onfielded Yugoslav forces, Task Force Hawk, and peace operations. The 1999 military operation in Kosovo suggests severalareas in which Joint military operations were deficient. This studyexamines all aspects of the Kosovo conflict, with a focus on U.S. Armyinvolvement, including its political and historical underpinnings, inan attempt to understand these deficiencies and to recommendimprovements.
Download Description
An examination of the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, with afocus on joint military operations.The 1999 military operation against the Yugoslav Army in Kosovosuggests several areas in which Joint military operations weredeficient. This study examined all aspects of the Kosovo conflict,including its political and historical underpinnings, in an attempt tounderstand these deficiencies and to recommend improvements. Thisdocument--provided in both a classified and unclassified version--isbased on extensive original source documents and interviews with mostof the principal participants, and serves as the definitive Armyrecord on Kosovo. While the primary focus of the research was on U.S.Army involvement, it covered many other aspects of Operation AlliedForce. Topics included NATO objectives in Operation Allied Force, airand ground planning, evolution of the air operation and its effects onfielded Yugoslav forces, Task Force Hawk, and peace operations. The 1999 military operation in Kosovo suggests severalareas in which Joint military operations were deficient. This study examines all aspects of the Kosovo conflict, with a focus on U.S. Armyinvolvement, including its political and historical underpinnings, inan attempt to understand these deficiencies and to recommendimprovements.
Customer Reviews:
Short but rich in details.......2007-03-08
This is the best synopsis of the Kosovo War and Operation "Allied Force" in particular that you can find, and despite the small number of pages it contains a wealth of information regarding the facts that led to the war, the military operations and, especially the reasons behind the NATO's decision to fight only by air. Great emphasis is given to the role (and mishaps) of Task Force Hawk deployed to Albania and why this contingent was troubled from the beginning. The authors state that Operation "Allied Force" succeeded beyond hope, edging on catastrophe, because it was waged without a strong ground element in place and without real intention to escalate with a ground invasion. They reveal also that NATO was planning for an invasion of Serbia itself through Romania and Hungary and that General Clark had asked for six full US divisions! The book also covers the post-war developments, like the KFOR synthesis, its mission and the problems it faced from the start. This is a very good book, but the reader who wants to go a little deeper on the subject should accompany this with B. Lambeth's excellent "NATO's Air War for Kosovo" also published by RAND.
Books:
- Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
- Love's Unending Legacy/Love's Unfolding Dream/Love Takes Wing/Love Finds a Home (Love Comes Softly Series 5-8)
- Mark of the Lion : A Voice in the Wind, An Echo in the Darkness, As Sure As the Dawn (Vol 1-3)
- Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home
- Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design
- My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Historical Studies of Urban America)
- My Woman His Wife
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself (Penguin Classics)
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Schmucks!: Our Favorite Fakes, Frauds, Lowlifes, Liars, the Armed and Dangerous, and Good Guys Gone
- Facing Your Giants: The God Who Made a Miracle Out of David Stands Ready to Make One Out of You
- To Cut a Long Story Short
- Zen and the Art of Quilting: Exploring Memory and Meaning in Patchwork
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Issue 2
- Flow Measurement Engineering Handbook
- Discrete-Time Signal Processing
- The Nature of Southeast Alaska: A Guide to Plants Animals and Habitats
- WILLIAM APPLEMAN WILLIAMS: THE TRAGEDY OF EMPIRE. American Radicals Series
- Minnesota Business Directory 2001-2002: The Ultimate Sales & Credit Tool
Dreams That Money Can Buy: The Tragic Life of Libby Holman
The Scandalous Libby Holman - Something to Remember Her By
The Gilded Leaf: Triumph, Tragedy, and Tobacco: Three Generations of the R. J. Reynolds Family and Fortune
