conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime about I><a, Dulaney, Die</a></I with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author's previous novels featuring a sleuth who's an expert in rare and collectible books won this former bookstore owner a devoted following; first editions of <I><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380718839/${0}">Booked to Die</a></I> and <I><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671567829/${0}">The Bookman's Wake</a></I> routinely fetch high sums in stores like the one the author himself owned for many years. With the verisimilitude that's a hallmark of his writing, the author delves into a new topic, the golden days of radio, igniting the reader's excitement about the enormous potential of the medium. Sadly, he can't assuage the inevitable disappointment over how that potential was wasted: <blockquote>"Radio is the greatest invention of the past four centuries. It ranks right up there with Gutenberg's movable type as an earthshaking force.... One of the first things Gutenberg did with his movable type was print a magnificent Bible. The first thing radio did was argue how much selling would be permitted and how ridiculous it would be allowed to get. If it keeps on the way it's going there won't be anything worth listening to.... I have this almost morbid fear of the future--not that radio's greatest days will fade away but that its greatest day will never come. Fifty years from now it could just be a medium of hucksters and fools, a whorehouse in the sky."</blockquote> The speaker is Jack Dulaney, a novelist who follows a dead man's trail to the Jersey shore in the early days of World War II, where a radio station owned by a recluse has fallen on hard times. The mysterious Harford, who built the station as a showcase for his late wife's ambition, has all but abandoned WHAR, but the actors, writers, producers, and technicians who once shared the dead woman's dream are galvanized by the appearance of Dulaney, who finds his true m&eacute;tier in the creation of original, politically provocative broadcast dramas. He also discovers true love in a talented young singer, Holly Carnahan, whose affections he once sacrificed out of loyalty to his best friend.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: With the verisimilitude that's a hallmark of his writing, the author delves into a new topic, the golden days of radio, igniting the reader's excitement about the enormous potential of the medium. Sadly, he can't assuage the inevitable disappointment over how that potential was wasted: <blockquote>"Radio is the greatest invention of the past four centuries. It ranks right up there with Gutenberg's movable type as an earthshaking force.... One of the first things Gutenberg did with his movable type was print a magnificent Bible. The first thing radio did was argue how much selling would be permitted and how ridiculous it would be allowed to get. If it keeps on the way it's going there won't be anything worth listening to.... I have this almost morbid fear of the future--not that radio's greatest days will fade away but that its greatest day will never come. Fifty years from now it could just be a medium of hucksters and fools, a whorehouse in the sky."</blockquote> The speaker is Jack Dulaney, a novelist who follows a dead man's trail to the Jersey shore in the early days of World War II, where a radio station owned by a recluse has fallen on hard times. The mysterious Harford, who built the station as a showcase for his late wife's ambition, has all but abandoned WHAR, but the actors, writers, producers, and technicians who once shared the dead woman's dream are galvanized by the appearance of Dulaney, who finds his true m&eacute;tier in the creation of original, politically provocative broadcast dramas. He also discovers true love in a talented young singer, Holly Carnahan, whose affections he once sacrificed out of loyalty to his best friend.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.. Start with the sentence 'Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
  It was easy: the camp was lax and no one questioned his story'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
  It was easy: the camp was lax and no one questioned his story. He gave her name to a guard and was led into a street of tents whipped by swirls of dust. They stopped and the guard shook a flap until an older woman stuck her head out and cursed him in Dutch.
  They stopped at a barbed-wire pen in the far corner of the camp. "She'd be in here," the guard said. "You know what she looks like?"
  He took down the wire gate and walked into the kraal. Scores of women and children sat on the bare earth. Gaunt faces, eyes beyond desperation. This was where they were put when they were dying.
  She raised her head. Stared at him but didn't seem to see. The child at her breast was shriveled and splotchy and so was she. Her hair had begun to shed and her arms and face were covered with a rash that anyone who'd been in the army knew on sight. Syphilis.
  He had a sudden impulse to snatch the bastard infant and smash its brains out. He kneeled and touched her arm. "Oh my God, Margaret!"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They found a bench, quiet and dark. She was a shape beside him, her voice coming up from nowhere, like that first day in the bar.
  He heard what she said but it had no meaning. Whatever she was thinking, he would talk her out of it. He would tell her how close he was to knowing everything and she would see what they had to do. But when she spoke again he felt this certainty slipping away from him.
  He saw a blurred movement as she touched her face. "When it was just me alone I was fine. I really don't care what they do to me, they can't hurt me at all. But now you're here and they are going to kill you. Don't argue with me, please, I can feel it. It's the one thing I know, and I know it more every day."
  Somehow he had to tell her what he did believe, what he knew. But his words sounded stiff when he said them. "I know how to end this. I can get this guy now. That's where your salvation is. It's not in Canada... not in France."
  His mind picked at straws. How could he buy some time?.. change her mind?.. or much more than that, how could he fix her ailing heart in the few seconds before she sent him away from her? How could he tell her that a year or a lifetime of years could not make a dent in his own desolation if she left him now?.. that he had been a shadow of himself all those years on the road without her? He had no answers: a pact was the best he could hope for. He would agree to anything if she would stay in touch in some minimal way... a letter once a year to some cold and distant general delivery. People change in a year, and anything was better than the dreadful void without her. But when he said this he met a wall of silence.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But when he said this he met a wall of silence. She was a shape beside him, her voice coming up from nowhere, like that first day in the bar.
  He heard what she said but it had no meaning. Whatever she was thinking, he would talk her out of it. He would tell her how close he was to knowing everything and she would see what they had to do. But when she spoke again he felt this certainty slipping away from him.
  He saw a blurred movement as she touched her face. "When it was just me alone I was fine. I really don't care what they do to me, they can't hurt me at all. But now you're here and they are going to kill you. Don't argue with me, please, I can feel it. It's the one thing I know, and I know it more every day."
  Somehow he had to tell her what he did believe, what he knew. But his words sounded stiff when he said them. "I know how to end this. I can get this guy now. That's where your salvation is. It's not in Canada... not in France."
  His mind picked at straws. How could he buy some time?.. change her mind?.. or much more than that, how could he fix her ailing heart in the few seconds before she sent him away from her? How could he tell her that a year or a lifetime of years could not make a dent in his own desolation if she left him now?.. that he had been a shadow of himself all those years on the road without her? He had no answers: a pact was the best he could hope for. He would agree to anything if she would stay in touch in some minimal way... a letter once a year to some cold and distant general delivery. People change in a year, and anything was better than the dreadful void without her.They found a bench, quiet and dark.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: By nine o'clock his chores were done. He sat alone in the tack room, surrounded by his present, lost in his past. It happened to him a dozen times a week... he'd be shoeing a horse or standing on the backstretch rail with a stopwatch in his hand and suddenly his spirit was in another time and place, a cornfield of microphones, a world of soundstages and production rooms and the boundless energy of stories without sight. A thousand creative possibilities crossed his mind. If his new world was steady, his old one was as infinite as the universe. He was aware of her in the doorway, saw her shadow as she moved into the light, felt her hands on his shoulders. "You sentimental old bugger," she said, and he laughed and leaned over and kissed her hand.
  MORE than twenty-eight thousand Boer women and children died in Kitchener's camps. As many as twenty-two thousand British boys came home in coffins.
  Ireland remained neutral throughout Hitler's war. Churchill was outraged when the Irish closed their ports to British convoy escorts. Dublin was sometimes described as a nest of German spies.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about stopped.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: By nine o'clock his chores were done. He sat alone in the tack room, surrounded by his present, lost in his past. It happened to him a dozen times a week... he'd be shoeing a horse or standing on the backstretch rail with a stopwatch in his hand and suddenly his spirit was in another time and place, a cornfield of microphones, a world of soundstages and production rooms and the boundless energy of stories without sight. A thousand creative possibilities crossed his mind. If his new world was steady, his old one was as infinite as the universe. 
  He heard a noise out in the shedrow: her voice as she stopped to fondle the old saddle pony. He was aware of her in the doorway, saw her shadow as she moved into the light, felt her hands on his shoulders. "You sentimental old bugger," she said, and he laughed and leaned over and kissed her hand. 
  MORE than twenty-eight thousand Boer women and children died in Kitchener's camps. As many as twenty-two thousand British boys came home in coffins. 
  Ireland remained neutral throughout Hitler's war. Churchill was outraged when the Irish closed their ports to British convoy escorts. Dublin was sometimes described as a nest of German spies.