Autorentext

For over 75 years John B Holway has struggled to write short, clear English sentences. It's a challenge flung at him by a University of Iowa professor, whose lessons consisted of three sentences: "Keep it short! Keep it short! Keep it short!" After a stint in Korea, where he almost got killed, he's still trying to do it. He's written over 20 books, many of them based on research about, and interviews with, over 75 old-time Negro league ball players. The books won several awards. When he branched out to do black World War II flying heroes, the result became a movie, "The Red Tails," by George Lucas of "Star Wars" fame. Holway has visited all 50 states and about 40 countries - China, Russia, India, Argentina, Ghana etc. His favorites: Nepal, where he wallowed through snow to 18,000 feet on Annapurna, and Japan, where he got married. He speaks a smattering of Japanese, Chinese, French, Nepali, and English. He married a Japanese girl and adopted four great kids from Korea, China, and Pakistan. He was greatly impressed by his first movie, at the age of three - "The Mummy" with Boris Karloff in 1933. As Karloff, wrapped in bandages, crept up behind two explorers, John screamed so loud his father swept him up and rushed him out of the theater. He's been an incurable movie nut ever since.

Klappentext

John Holway brings history to life, like watching nine movies unroll before your eyes. American heroes you didn't read about in school. Yankee artists descend on Claude Monet's French village to paint with the Master and dally with his pretty daughters. Until the Old Man finds out. Then there's hell to pay. A pretty black Amelia Earhart does loop the loops in her bi-plane over Paris - and dazzles the men of France and America. Steve Nelson endures police beatings fighting for coal miners' rights, then sails to Spain to fight Fascist Armies while America sleeps. Bert Shepard straps himself into a fighter plane and roars into combat. He loses a leg but straps on a new one to pitch in the major leagues. While Congressmen cringe at the bully Joe McCarthy, a tiny woman, Margaret Chase Smith, strikes the first blow to bring him down. Charlie Bussey climbs a Korean hill with three men and two machine guns and blows away 258 enemy. But the Army refuses to award a Medal of Honor, because he's black. Three Salem Witches battle gamblers and amorous players to zap the Patriots to their first NFL flag. Arguing, aloholic Solveg, 36, and gimpy Eddie, 18, set out to cross a 20,000-foot mountain pass before the snows close it. They also fall in love. But can it endure?