conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Shooting Stars about pronounced, Hod-son, Seattle with the genre: Teen & Young Adult.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author (pronounced with a silent g, Hod-son) currently resides in the Seattle, Washington area with her husband and three young daughters. Leslie has always had a fascination with the night sky and has lived with horses her entire life. Her nickname growing up was barn girl as she was never far from her horses. She started a business combining two of her three favorite things: kids and horses. Her other favorite thing is writing, and she hopes to share the magic of the night sky, animal companionship and endless possibilities with you!
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about Shooting, Stars, Daddy with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Shooting Stars'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Shooting Stars
  Sutter is alone; people try in vain to keep him at Fort Vancouver, offer him a position—he rejects all such suggestions; the lure of the magic name is in his blood.
  He begins by crossing the Pacific in a rickety sailing ship to the Sandwich Islands, and after getting into endless difficulties off the coasts of Alaska he lands in a desolate place known as San Francisco. It is not the city of today, which after the earthquake in 1906 has shot up with redoubled growth and has millions of inhabitants—at this time it is a poor fishing village that gets its name from the Franciscan mission; it is not even the capital of the little-known Mexican province of California, lying fallow and desolate without livestock or good growth in the most luxuriant zone of the new continent.
  Deals, we can conclude, were quickly done there. A thousand miles from any kind of civilization, the energy of a single human being does not carry the same price tag as it does at home.
  Ahead of them rolls a gigantic wave of fire. They are setting the forests alight as they go along, an easier way of clearing the land than grubbing up the trees. And as soon as the raging flames have swept across the terrain, while the tree stumps are still smoking, they set to work. Storerooms are built, wells dug, seeds sown on soil that needs no ploughing, hurdles are made to pen in the huge flocks and herds. Gradually, more workers arrive from the abandoned mission colonies nearby.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The accounts written by the five become uneasier in those last days; like the blue needle of the compass, they begin to tremble close to the Pole. "It is a big strain as the shadows creep slowly round from our right through ahead to our left!" But now and then hope sparkles more and more brightly. Scott describes the distances covered more and more feelingly. "Only another ninety miles to the Pole, but it's going to be a stiff pull both ways apparently." That is the voice of exhaustion. And two days later: "Only 63 miles from the Pole tonight. We ought to do the trick, but oh! for a better surface!" Then, however, we suddenly hear a new, victorious note. "Only 51 miles to the Pole tonight. If we don't get to it we shall be d—d close." On 14th January hope becomes certainty. "We are less than 40 miles from the Pole. It is a critical time, but we ought to pull through." On 14th January hope becomes cheerfulness in the account. You feel from Scott's heartfelt lines how tense their sinews are, tense with hope, how all their nerves quiver with expectation and impatience. The prize is close, they are already reaching out to the last mystery on earth. One final effort, and they will have reached their goal.
  Soon the last doubt is destroyed by the undeniable fact of a black flag hoisted on a sledge bearer above the traces of someone else's abandoned campsite—marks left by the runners of sledges, and dogs' paw prints. Amundsen has camped here. Something vast and hard for mankind to grasp has happened: in a molecule of time the South Pole of the earth, uninhabited for millennia, unseen by earthly eyes, has been discovered twice within two weeks. And they are the second discoverers—too late by a single month out of millions of months—the second men to reach the Pole, but coming first means everything to them and coming second nothing. So all their efforts were in vain, all their privations ridiculous, all the hopes of weeks, months, years were absurd. Scott wonders in his diary what it had all been for—for nothing but dreams? "All the day dreams must go; it will be a wearisome return." Tears come to their eyes, and in spite of their exhaustion they cannot sleep that night. Sad and hopeless, they set out like men condemned to death on the last march to the Pole that they had expected to conquer with jubilation. No one tries to console the others; they drag themselves on without a word. On 18th January Captain Scott reaches the Pole with his four companions. Now that the idea of having been the first no longer dazzles him, all he sees, dull-eyed, is the bleakness of the landscape. There is nothing there to be seen, Scott concludes, "very little that is different from the awful monotony of the past days. Great God! this is an awful place!" The only strange thing that they discover is created not by nature but by his rival's human hand: Amundsen's tent with the Norwegian flag fluttering boldly and triumphantly from the rampart that humanity has now stormed. A letter from the conqueror of the Pole waits for the unknown second comer who would tread here after him, asking him to forward it to King Haakon of Norway. Scott takes it upon himself to perform this hardest duty of all, acting as a witness to the world that someone else has done the deed that he longed to be his own.
  They sadly put up the British flag, "our poor slighted Union Jack", beside Amundsen's sign of his victory. Then they leave "the goal of our ambition", Scott writes, with prophetic misgivings, "Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it."
  The dangers are ten times worse on the return journey. The compass guided them on the way to the Pole. Now they must also take care not to lose their own trail on the way back, not to lose it once for weeks on end, in case they miss finding the depots where they have stored their food, clothing and the warmth that a few gallons of petroleum mean. So they are uneasy about every step they take when driving snow impedes their vision, for every deviation from the trail will lead to certain death. And their bodies lack the freshness of the first march, when they were still heated by the chemical energies of plentiful food and the warmth of their Antarctic home.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The news is like a clap of thunder, and is immediately understood. All round the world it is known that President Wilson refuses to accept any peace that runs counter to the principles of the covenant, even if only in one point, and is determined to leave the conference rather than give way. A historic moment has come, a moment that will determine the fate of Europe, the fate of the world for decades, indeed centuries. If Wilson rises from the conference table the old world order will collapse, and chaos will ensue; but perhaps it will be one of those states of chaos from which a new star is born. Europe shivers impatiently. Will the other participants in the conference take that responsibility? Will he take it himself? It is a moment of decision.
  Dismayed, desperate, and with his confidence disturbed by this unanimous onslaught, Wilson looks around him. There is no one at his side, they are all against him in the conference hall, all his own staff too; and the voices of the invisible millions upon millions adjuring him from a distance to stand firm and be true to himself do not reach him. He does not guess that if he carried out his threat and stood up to leave he would make his name immortal for all time, that if he did remain true to himself he would bequeath that immaculate name to the future as a postulate constantly to be invoked. He does not guess what creative force would proceed from that "No" if he announced it to the powers of greed, hatred and stupidity, he feels only that he is alone and is too weak to shoulder that ultimate responsibility. And so, fatally, Wilson gradually gives way, he relaxes his rigid stance. Colonel House acts as go-between; concessions will be made, for a week the bargaining over borders goes this way and that. At last, on 15th April—a dark day in history—Wilson agrees with a heavy heart and a troubled conscience to the military demands of Clemenceau, which have already been considerably toned down: the Saar will not be handed over for ever, only for fifteen years. This is the uncompromising Wilson's first compromise, and as if by magic the mood of the Parisian press changes overnight. The newspapers that were yesterday condemning him as the disturber of the peace, the destroyer of the world, now praise him as the wisest of all statesmen. But that praise burns like a reproach in his inmost heart. Wilson knows that he may indeed have saved peace, the peace of the present day; but enduring peace in a spirit of reconciliation, the only kind that saves us, has been lost, the opportunity wasted. Lack of sense has conquered true sense, passion has conquered reason. The world, storming a supra-temporal ideal, has been beaten back, and he, the leader and standard-bearer of that ideal, has lost the deciding battle, the battle against himself.
  Did Wilson do right or wrong in that fateful hour? Who can say? At least, a decision was made, and the historic day cannot be called back. Its effects reach far ahead over decades and centuries, and we are paying the price for the decision with our blood, our despair, our powerlessness against destruction. From that day on Wilson's power, in his own time an unparalleled moral force, was broken, his prestige gone and with it his strength. A man who makes a concession can no longer stop. Compromises inevitably lead to more compromises.
  Dishonesty creates dishonesty, violence engenders more violence. The peace of which Wilson dreamt as a whole entity lasting for ever remains incomplete, because it was not formed with a mind to the future or out of the spirit of humanity and the pure material of reason. A unique opportunity, perhaps the most far-reaching in history, was pitifully wasted, and the disappointed world, deprived of any element of the divine again, in a sombre and confused mood, feels the lack of it. The man who goes home, and who was once hailed as the saviour of the world, is not anyone's saviour now, only a tired, sick person who has been mortally wounded. No jubilation accompanies him, no flags are waved. As the ship sets out from the European coast, the conquered man turns away. He will not let his eyes look back at our unfortunate continent, which has been longing for peace and unity for thousands of years and has never achieved it. And once again the eternal vision of a humane world recedes into mist and into the distance.
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