conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled A Long Way From Home about University, Christian, Buffalo with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Leaders & Notable People?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Christian W. the author was born in Buffalo, N.Y. He recently retired from a twenty year career in the U.S. Army. He currently has five traditional fantasy novels in print, another seven under contract, and have participated in another five anthologies. He recently won an award in the L Ron Hubbard Writer's of the Future Contest. Much of the experiences and battle sequences in his novels come from his three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and a keenly developed understanding of military tactics. He graduated from Campbell University with a degree in history and is pursuing a Masters of Arts degree in Military History from Norwich University. He currently lives outside of Raleigh, N.C. and devotes his time to writing and to his family and their two Bernese Mountain Dogs.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Christian W. the author was born in Buffalo, N.Y. He recently retired from a twenty year career in the U.S. Army. He currently has five traditional fantasy novels in print, another seven under contract, and have participated in another five anthologies. He recently won an award in the L Ron Hubbard Writer's of the Future Contest. Much of the experiences and battle sequences in his novels come from his three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and a keenly developed understanding of military tactics. He graduated from Campbell University with a degree in history and is pursuing a Masters of Arts degree in Military History from Norwich University. He currently lives outside of Raleigh, N.C.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled A Long Way From Home about Madison's, Clara, Montpelier with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the author's third novel, the connotations of home are anything but heartwarming. For an enslaved mother, daughter, and grandmother, Montpelier plantation in Virginia is a living hell--and the proprietor, at least initially, is none other than President James Madison. A Long Way from Home opens during Madison's lifetime, when Susie and her daughter Clara serve the First Couple as house slaves. As Clara fends off (and ultimately succumbs to) the sexual advances of one master after another, the author conjures up the entire world of the "peculiar institution."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Madison's, civilized, compared, unleashed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the author's third novel, the connotations of home are anything but heartwarming. For an enslaved mother, daughter, and grandmother, Montpelier plantation in Virginia is a living hell--and the proprietor, at least initially, is none other than President James Madison.  A Long Way from Home opens during Madison's lifetime, when Susie and her daughter Clara serve the First Couple as house slaves. Yet even this regime seems civilized compared to the havoc unleashed by Madison's brutal stepson. As Clara fends off (and ultimately succumbs to) the sexual advances of one master after another, the author conjures up the entire world of the "peculiar institution. "
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Home, Beautifully with the genre: Children's Books?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'A Long Way From Home'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first three paragraphs for this book? Start with the sentence 'A Long Way From Home
  As he was not a popular figure in the camp, I doubted the Punka Wallah had many followers'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Long Way From Home
  As he was not a popular figure in the camp, I doubted the Punka Wallah had many followers. Just the same he possessed a certain malevolent power and I was not pleased to find myself the object of his will.
  Doctor Battery had a bad eye but the other one was good, and he was respected for his marksmanship, always returning to the camp with tucker for those whose totem forbade them to eat kangaroo. All he needed was a car to take him shooting in the bush. He could drive himself, as he often said, which was why I kept the distributor rotor in my pocket, so my precious getaway was safe in my control.
  Crowbar also hunted but, more importantly, he was a father of four girls and thus had his own uses for my car. The other teacher—my poor predecessor—had driven girls and boys to the Fifteen Mile where there was a reliable swimming hole, even in the dry. As the weather had become unbearably hot, I had followed his Volkswagen tracks to water, and you would never guess how many pupils I fitted into that Peugeot, fifteen inside and more on the roof rack. During those happy days I would be quite astonished to see what my life had become—faster, faster, Uncle Redex—those bare feet hanging over the windscreen and over the side.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I was the teacher, she the pupil, but it was her country. I mean, it was not insane to trust her judgement that she might lead the way across. To me, the river seemed a different beast since last we crossed. Not only had the water risen, but there was more debris which now jacked the tyres, just a little, an inch or less, but sufficient to lose a percentage of traction and permit the water to get a better hold of me.
  The girl took two careless stumbling steps and I thought she was gone but she recovered and from that point there was no option for either of us but to inch towards the shore. She tripped a second time and I thought her lost but then she grabbed the bumper bar and, as I watched, climbed like a river creature onto the steaming hood.
  Then my tyres were spinning in the welcome mud and I saw her marvellous white teeth laughing and she crawled across directly through the absent windscreen and her clothes were drenched and pasted to her, like clay slip in a sculptor's studio.
  She rolled forward into the passenger seat and poured water from her sandshoes out her window and I thought, one day, Susie Shuttle, you will be an important woman.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Peugeot, steering, feeling, wished.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I was the teacher, she the pupil, but it was her country. I mean, it was not insane to trust her judgement that she might lead the way across. To me, the river seemed a different beast since last we crossed. Not only had the water risen, but there was more debris which now jacked the tyres, just a little, an inch or less, but sufficient to lose a percentage of traction and permit the water to get a better hold of me. In midstream, the edge of the bridge was not even visible and I was steering against the current, feeling how the Peugeot wished to float. 
  The girl took two careless stumbling steps and I thought she was gone but she recovered and from that point there was no option for either of us but to inch towards the shore. She tripped a second time and I thought her lost but then she grabbed the bumper bar and, as I watched, climbed like a river creature onto the steaming hood. 
  Then my tyres were spinning in the welcome mud and I saw her marvellous white teeth laughing and she crawled across directly through the absent windscreen and her clothes were drenched and pasted to her, like clay slip in a sculptor's studio. 
  She rolled forward into the passenger seat and poured water from her sandshoes out her window and I thought, one day, Susie Shuttle, you will be an important woman.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last paragraph?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was Georgine who introduced me to Hal Moloney just as he was finishing his history of the Redex Trial. She also knew the Adelaide historian Tom Gara who became a constant advisor during the writing process. When my own illness prevented our great planned adventure on the Nullarbor Tom took me on other journeys in the library, returning with, amongst other treasures, the work of Deborah Bird Rose who alerted me to those rewritings of the white narratives of colonisation, for instance Captain Cook and Ned Kelly. The Captain Cook narrative in this novel is taken directly from Hobbles Danaiyarri's account which Deborah recorded at Victoria Downs and later wrote about so tellingly. She assures me Hobbles would have been more than happy to see this story find a different readership. The portion I have used is lightly edited.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was Georgine who introduced me to Hal Moloney just as he was finishing his history of the Redex Trial. She also knew the Adelaide historian Tom Gara who became a constant advisor during the writing process. When my own illness prevented our great planned adventure on the Nullarbor Tom took me on other journeys in the library, returning with, amongst other treasures, the work of Deborah Bird Rose who alerted me to those rewritings of the white narratives of colonisation, for instance Captain Cook and Ned Kelly. The Captain Cook narrative in this novel is taken directly from Hobbles Danaiyarri's account which Deborah recorded at Victoria Downs and later wrote about so tellingly. She assures me Hobbles would have been more than happy to see this story find a different readership.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Long Way From Home
  After graduation I headed for the University of Iowa, a Big Ten school with a reputation for academic excellence and a powerhouse football team. One of my high school classmates, the estimable quarterback Bill Whisler, was going there on a full football scholarship, and I was attracted to its bucolic setting along the Iowa River.
  I had seen the university briefly in the spring of my senior year in high school. My father and I had made the long drive from Yankton because I had been encouraged to apply in person for a food services job at the dorm where I would be staying. I needed the extra money to help pay the out-of-state tuition.
  So Dad and I left Yankton around three in the morning for a nine A.M. appointment. He stayed in the car as I went in for what turned out to be a perfunctory dismissal of my chances by a stern middle-aged woman with a tightly wound personality and a hairdo to match. She'd responded to my application only as a courtesy, she said; all the jobs had been filled.
  When I reported this to Red, who was napping in the car after the long drive, I had to practically physically restrain him from charging into her office to raise hell about our treatment. Since all campus environments were new to him and this one was unknown to me, we made a quick tour and then bolted for relatives in the northern part of the state to spend the night.
  We were little more prepared when Mother and Dad dropped me off for the fall term. The University of Iowa was one of the smaller Big Ten schools, but its students outnumbered the population of Yankton, so I was suddenly a very small fish in a much larger pond. Moreover, many of the students were from Chicago or its affluent suburbs and they carried with them a self-assurance I had only rarely encountered in South Dakota.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the end of my week in Minnesota I was on the road again, hitchhiking back to South Dakota and my parents' home. There, on election night in 1960, a small bulb began to burn through my consciousness. I stayed up all night, watching the NBC News team led by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as the returns seesawed back and forth between Nixon and Kennedy. Finally, well after dawn, NBC News projected Kennedy the winner. I was bedazzled by the historic moment and the informed byplay among the correspondents—John Chancellor, Sander Vanocur, Edwin Newman, and the others. Although it was not a "Eureka!" experience, I began to see the outlines of a career.
  Of course, I still had a good deal of reforming ahead. As usual, Mother was a key player. One morning when I came down for breakfast she was watching the local news from KTIV, the NBC affiliate in Sioux City. The newscaster was less than amateurish, and Mother said matter-of-factly: "You could do better than that. Why don't you apply for his job? Your father and I will drive you to Sioux City." I made an appointment with the station personnel director, Don Stone, and Mother and Dad deposited me at the station.
  He hired me as a staff announcer, part-time weatherman, and substitute newscaster for $75 a week. I rented a room; since I didn't have a car, I walked to work and depended on the kindness of strangers and friends to get around.
  Quickly, I adapted to my new environment. I liked the young production crew, many of them part-time students like me, and the professional full-timers, including an ambitious young graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. His name was David Schoumacher, and this was his first job after fulfilling an Air Force obligation. He brought a serious, professional attitude to his duties, and I became something of a protégé.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the end of my week in Minnesota I was on the road again, hitchhiking back to South Dakota and my parents' home. There, on election night in 1960, a small bulb began to burn through my consciousness. I stayed up all night, watching the NBC News team led by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as the returns seesawed back and forth between Nixon and Kennedy. Finally, well after dawn, NBC News projected Kennedy the winner. I was bedazzled by the historic moment and the informed byplay among the correspondents—John Chancellor, Sander Vanocur, Edwin Newman, and the others. Although it was not a "Eureka!" experience, I began to see the outlines of a career.
  Of course, I still had a good deal of reforming ahead. As usual, Mother was a key player. One morning when I came down for breakfast she was watching the local news from KTIV, the NBC affiliate in Sioux City. The newscaster was less than amateurish, and Mother said matter-of-factly: "You could do better than that. Why don't you apply for his job? Your father and I will drive you to Sioux City." I made an appointment with the station personnel director, Don Stone, and Mother and Dad deposited me at the station.
  He hired me as a staff announcer, part-time weatherman, and substitute newscaster for $75 a week. I rented a room; since I didn't have a car, I walked to work and depended on the kindness of strangers and friends to get around.
  Quickly, I adapted to my new environment. I liked the young production crew, many of them part-time students like me, and the professional full-timers, including an ambitious young graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. His name was David Schoumacher, and this was his first job after fulfilling an Air Force obligation.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I am also extremely grateful for the long and detailed history of the Brokaw family provided by the genealogists at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. It is a true treasure for our family.
  Sarah Hodder and Phil Napoli were tireless and resourceful in their pursuit of the factual history of the Great Plains, the small towns where I lived and the time about which I wrote. Sarah, particularly, became an expert on turn-of-the-century development in northern South Dakota, dam construction on the Missouri River, and the social and political evolution of my hometown.
  Carole Lowenstein and Daniel Rembert deserve special thanks for framing my words with photos and mementos going back a century.
  Her assistant, Jessica Kirshner, was the master of logistics and the calm, friendly stalwart who deftly handled all of the incoming calls, photos, queries, and manuscripts. Whatever else happens in the world, Jessica, we'll always have our e-mail.
  I greatly regret that I couldn't mention by name everyone who was important to me as I was growing up. There were so many people—from pals, girlfriends, and role models to teachers and friends of my parents. I am indebted to you all.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I am indebted to you all.. There were so many people—from pals, girlfriends, and role models to teachers and friends of my parents.
  I greatly regret that I couldn't mention by name everyone who was important to me as I was growing up. Whatever else happens in the world, Jessica, we'll always have our e-mail.
  Her assistant, Jessica Kirshner, was the master of logistics and the calm, friendly stalwart who deftly handled all of the incoming calls, photos, queries, and manuscripts.
  Carole Lowenstein and Daniel Rembert deserve special thanks for framing my words with photos and mementos going back a century. Sarah, particularly, became an expert on turn-of-the-century development in northern South Dakota, dam construction on the Missouri River, and the social and political evolution of my hometown.
  Sarah Hodder and Phil Napoli were tireless and resourceful in their pursuit of the factual history of the Great Plains, the small towns where I lived and the time about which I wrote. It is a true treasure for our family.I am also extremely grateful for the long and detailed history of the Brokaw family provided by the genealogists at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City