Men God Forgot

Demon's Land they called it - a bastardisation of Van Diemen's Land - a place where men rotted or starved or were flogged to death... The maximum security hard-labour camp at Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour was the end of the line for prisoners - a hell on earth for convicts and gaolers alike - and when in 1833, it was decided to close the settlement, ten desperate and ruthless men seized the ship that was to transport them, and made their final bid for freedom.. This book, based on historical fact, is a reconstruction of one of the most exciting incidents in the bloody history of the penal colonies.

An unforgettable collection of novellas from the author of Legends of the Fall explores the line between civilization and the “wild men.” Jim Harrison is an American master. The Beast God Forgot to Invent offers stories of culture and wildness, of men and beasts and where they overlap. A wealthy man retired to the Michigan woods narrates the tale of a younger man decivilized by brain damage. A Michigan Indian wanders Los Angeles, hobnobbing with starlets and screenwriters while he tracks an ersatz Native-American activist who stole his bearskin. An aging alpha canine, the author of three dozen throwaway biographies, eats dinner with the ex-wife of his overheated youth, and must confront the man he used to be. “Harrison’s intricate symbolism and scathing observations of urban foibles, his sly humor and vibrant language remind readers that he is one of our most talented chroniclers of the masculine psyche, intellectual or not.” —Publishers Weekly

From the headlines of today comes the ultimate adventure story of discovery. Two scientists unwittingly introduce a small tribe of prehistoric people living in isolation for a half million years to the ultimate modern predator: humanity. This is their adventure combining a clash of cultures, religious ardor with the oldest stories of all: the meaning of friendship and love. The two scientists, Sarah and Richard discover the existence of a living human ancestor, Homo floresiensis on an isolated tropical island. These small Hobbit-like creatures are not the Hobbits of JRR Tolkien¿s stories, but a small tribe of prehistoric people living in seeming isolation for nearly a half million years on the Indonesian island of Irmã Flores. In their unrelenting quest for knowledge, Sarah and Richard unintentionally expose these innocents to the onslaught of the modern world including corporate raiders, Indonesian pirates and religious zealots. In the process of discovery and befriending these ancient people, Sarah and Richard rediscover their own humanity and the opportunity to find true love. This as a rousing adventure book with serious undertones about our very definition of humanity, and how we treat the other sentient creatures that occupy our small planet. What is at the core of being human, and how are we systematically destroying those very same qualities that we hold so dear?

The dramatic tale of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II received little attention prior to the publication of this book in 1982, when Winslow chronicled their short and tragic story of heroism and defeat.Greatly outnumbered by vastly superior forces, and saddled with defective equipment; a lack of supplies, reinforcements, and air cover; and, towards the end, an incompetent and bungled Allied combined command, the Asiatic fleet met the Japanese head-on. Within a matter of three months, however, the beleaguered ships were totally wiped out. Captain Walter Winslow, a naval aviator on board the USS Houston, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, was in a unique position to tell the riveting story. As an active participant in all the major battles the fleet engaged in, he had an intimate understanding of the calamities that befell it. In addition, he drew upon the his own extensive notes he kept from a POW camp while interviewing other American, British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners from the Allied fleet. Winslow also painstakingly tracked down war documents and battle reports from all the ships assigned to the fleet to paint a complete picture filled with graphic details of the fleet’s only victory at Balikpapan; the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea that broke the back of the combined Asiatic fleet; the ghastly spectacle at Sunda Strait where the Houston struggled to survive; the suspenseful episode in the submarine Perch trapped in the mud at the bottom of the sea; and the daring escape from Corregidor of eighteen crewmembers from the USS Quail who refused to surrender to the Japanese forces.

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing . . . It is God without men. —Honoré de Balzac, Une passion dans le désert, 1830 Jaz and Lisa Matharu are plunged into a surreal public hell after their son, Raj, vanishes during a family vacation in the California desert. However, the Mojave is a place of strange power, and before Raj reappears inexplicably unharmed—but not unchanged—the fate of this young family will intersect with that of many others, echoing the stories of all those who have traveled before them. Driven by the energy and cunning of Coyote, the mythic, shape-shifting trickster, Gods Without Men is full of big ideas, but centered on flesh-and-blood characters who converge at an odd, remote town in the shadow of a rock formation called the Pinnacles. Viscerally gripping and intellectually engaging, it is, above all, a heartfelt exploration of the search for pattern and meaning in a chaotic universe. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.