Books with author James A. Michener

In such modern classics as Chesapeake, Centennial, Hawaii, Alaska, and Texas, James A. Michener proved time and again that his understanding of and love for his country was unparalleled. This Noble Land is Michener’s most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation—racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system—as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our “outstanding success.” Infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era. Praise for This Noble Land “A book-length essay on the often worrying, often inspiring course of America in the nine decades of Michener’s life.”—The Washington Post “Michener is more interested in fixing the problems than in fixing the blame.”—The Dallas Morning News “Michener’s are the beach books that, unlike most other beach books, leave you smarter than you were when you started reading. Each delivers the product of all that research, doled out to the reader at just the right rate. You know right away who the bad guys are—the petty ones, the stingy ones. The heroes are generous and energetic and smart and, above all, unprejudiced. The real-life villains in This Noble Land are the people Michener perceives as ‘petty, mean and vengeful.’”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Stirring . . . an admirable effort to define what has made our country great and how to preserve what is best about it.”—Kirkus Reviews

The action in Space is confined to a tight frame of only forty years, but in a scene that extends for billions of miles beyond the surface of the Earth. The American explorations and discoveries in space provide the principal subject matter of this engrossing and informative novel based on the activites of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the fascinating people and intricate machines connected with it. The story begins in October 1944 and introduces four men: Stanley Mott, U.S. engineer in England on a secret mission: Norman Grant, naval hero in the Battle of Leyte Gulf; John Pope, high-school football star and student of astronomy; Dieter Kolff, rocket engineesr. These four, who will be crucial to the space program, and their wives are principals in the enormous cast of characters, which also includes Randolph Claggett, Texan, Msrine, astronaut, and his wife, Debbie Dee; Cynthia Rhee,glamorous Korean reporterriter; Tucker Thompson, ebullient editor of Folks magazine; Leopols Strabismus, self-named confidence man who operates on the fringe. Th incredible successes of the Gemini and Apollo manned flights, the Viking landings on Mars, the breathtaking performance of the Columbia, the encounters with Jupiter and Saturn by Voyagers 1 and 2-these awesome achievements did not spring full-blown from a presidential edict. The story of what was behind them is vividly, dramatically and clearly told here: the complicated experimentations, invention and planning by scientists and engineers, and their debataes about means and ends,their speculations about future acommplishments in space and the possibility of life in other galaxies, the personal rivalries, the political maneuverings in Washington; the selection and training of the astronauts; the excitements and anxieties of the flights and landings; the public relations and media confrontations. Space is a compelling narrative, fiction for the most part, but solidly built on the factual and possible.

The famous author James A. Michener was chosen to serve as a Presidential Elector in 1968. While running on the Humphrey ticket in Pennsylvania, Michener was appalled by the blatant attempt by the Wallace campaign to attempt to hijack the presidential election through the electoral college. Much of the book details ideas he and other Electors had about a potential electoral vote deadlock including possible U.S. House action in the contingent election.