Books with author John F. HARRIS

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A gripping tale of heroism and valorNovelist John Harrison has captured the feeling of adventure in this new novel set in a dark time. A prophecy cast from the dawn of time is coming to be fulfilled in a time when almost all hope of salvation is lost.The lands are in chaos and everyone is trying to survive. The last queen was slain through treachery and decades have passed since there has been any form of solid rule in Cennicus. In the interim, the races have split from one another and are amassing for a war that threatens to consume them all. This is a time of legends and need.Somehow wrapped up in it all is one boy searching for his past and the keys to his future. Namir and his friends valiantly search out vestiges of his father’s past…a trek that may lead them into the very heart of darkness itself.This is the first book of the Shadow Saga, a must read for any fantasy enthusiast. Join us as we explore the darkness that is Cennicus.Will they lead us to salvation?Or deeper into the very darkness we seek to escape?

Any devout baseball enthusiast will appreciate the creative metrics that Dr. Harris has applied to the careers of young black ballplayers whose big-league life (in the cases examined here) began a good six or eight years after Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The “study group” is mostly drawn from Post Cereal cards that Harris lovingly collected as a boy. Some of his collection’s most promising members had dropped off the map when he revisited the cards decades later, and he grew curious. Black players, especially, seemed abundant in this unhappy set of strange disappearances. The project started, therefore, in a thesis: as of about 1960, making it in the Major Leagues remained much harder for African-Americans than for Caucasians.Statistical review included not only a comparison of black and white batting averages, Earned Run Averages, and other standard metrics, but also an exploration of environmental conditions, such as how often players endured the disruption of being traded and how much time they spent in inactivity between starts. There are two sides to every story, of course, and Harris takes pains to underscore the presumptions and blind spots in his own arguments; but the tendency for black players to encounter more obstacles and fewer rewards often emerges rather powerfully.As Dr. Harris attempts to refine these findings with additional research into sportswriters’ accounts and other sources, he unveils a theory never succinctly proposed by any source: that the prejudices in question were not simply a conditioned reflex to skin color, but that the “anything goes” baseball of the Negro Leagues made coaches and managers of the Fifties’ systematized, highly controlled Major League game very suspicious and uncomfortable. Members of the Caucasian “brain trust” feared being shown up or drawn beyond the bounds of their expertise. This stylistic prejudice—which lay close to the heart of the game’s racial prejudice, Harris believes—appears nowhere more clearly than in the emphasis of the home run. Aaron, Mays, Robinson, Banks... they all rose to glory on an impressive wave of homering; but potential superstars like Pinson, Altman, Al Smith, and Floyd Robinson may have been ruinously infected by Home Run Fever.Such a conclusion, because it removes prejudice from the purely ideological corner of racism and chooses to view it as a complex puzzle—because, that is, it doesn’t confront us with a simplistic “good guy/bad guy” scenario—will disappoint many of today’s social critics who want to cast all racial questions in a “good vs. evil” mold. Dr. Harris stresses, however, that he is uninterested in being the “white scholar trying to advertise… moral enlightenment” in a grand feat of virtue-signaling. Referring to prejudices that beset his own son’s baseball experience—not racial, but nevertheless severe—he asserts instead, “I am a father who once felt the anguish of looking on helplessly as his son’s confidence was sabotaged—and who has re-aggravated that anguish in pondering the young lives of a few talented men now gone from this world.”The book thus ends up being a personal odyssey: an odd, even unique evolution for a work on sports history. But then, baseball is a unique game. It bonds fathers and sons, and it breaks down barriers that ordinarily separate our communities. If John Harris’s approach defies the expectations of sportswriting by confusing its subjects with our sons and our brothers, does it not also therein suggest the only possible solution to the problem of racial bigotry?

Imagine you're so poor you have to scrape a living by selling wild grass. When the rains don't come the ground dries up and nothing can grow. You go hungry, and you know eventually you'll starve. So if you found a patch of fast growing grass in the middle of the desert you'd think your problems were over, wouldn't you That's what Sheng thought. But when his mum suggested he dig up the grass to plant in their garden his problems had only begun..... This is one of John Harris's most popular stories. He's told it to thousands of enraptured children in schools and libraries all over the country and now - by huge popular demand - it's available in print. It's an old story from China about loyalty, fear and courage. It will make you laugh and might make you cry. It's also about huge wealth, pots of gold, greedy robbers, nosey villagers and a bit of a (rather magical) surprise. If you're lucky enough to have heard John tell this story you'll know what a treat you're in for. If you're not, find out what you ve been missing!

It’s February 1942 and the Japanese invasion of Singapore is in full-swing. With the Allied Forces being crushed under the sheer numbers of the Japanese Empire, the biggest military push in the city’s modern history begins and ends at the Battle of Singapore, changing the lives of everyone caught in the fallout of the attack forever.Fortunately, in the midst of the chaos thousands of people were able to successfully flee the island and break away from terrifying destruction raging in the heart of the city. However, for one initially lucky group of students who find refuge escaping the island on a stowaway ship, their perceived salvation turns out to be a far greater life-changing experience than any world war.Escaping by way of sea, the group of international students quickly realise there’s something dangerously wrong with their rescue ship. Veering off-course and leaking nuclear radiation as a result of being caught in the crossfire of a full-blown Japanese invasion, the contaminated vessel gifts the students with supernatural powers – powers that soon prove to be more of a burden than they’re worth. As the ship makes an emergency stop on a remote Pacific island, the students struggle to adapt to their new surroundings, having to figure out a way to survive an imminent conflict that’s emerging between them and the island’s natives while also learning to grasp the immensity of their new magical abilities. However, as the tensions between the group and the natives escalate the students quickly realise that real danger always comes from within.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Shadow Play is the spellbinding continuation of the story started in Shadow Dance. This second book of the Shadow Saga carries the adventure to a whole new level of danger and intrigue! The next steps of the prophecy are moving toward fruition and the world hangs in the balance.Dark forces reveal their plots as the forces of good struggle to uncover them. At each turn, those aligned with light are cut off from their own and lost in the chaos that surrounds them. With Aras's death, only his wife and the future heir to the throne are left to combat the growing darkness.Within all of this, Namir and his friends find themselves consumed by enemies, burdened by woes and thrust into the fray against their will. Namir must find the courage to face those who would stop him from fulfilling his fate. All the while, his best friend, Nurn, searches valiantly to find his missing brother.