conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Russian, Billy, Aberowen entitled Fall of Giants.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fall of Giants: The novel begins with the thirteen-year-old Billy Williams, nicknamed Billy Twice, going to work his first day in the coal mine underneath the fictional Welsh town of Aberowen in 1911.\nThree years later, the main story begins.\nEdward "Fitz" Fitzherbert, Earl Fitzherbert, who maintains a country estate in Aberowen and licenses the land on which the coal mine is built, hosts a party for many powerful people around the world.\nHis guests include: Major characters introduced after the party include Grigori and Lev Peshkov, two Russian orphans who work in a locomotive factory and have personal reasons to hold a grudge against Princess Bea and the rest of the Russian royal family.\nGrigori and Lev\'s father was executed by Bea\'s aristocratic family for alleged improper grazing of cattle on Bea\'s family\'s land.\nThe overall theme of the novel revolves around common people trying, and many times succeeding, in throwing off the yokes so often placed on them by a society (largely focused on Britain and Russia) dominated by the landed aristocracy.\nThere are several key themes in this novel.\nFollett has done a remarkable job in linking several key facets in world history at this point.\nThey include the causes of the 1st World War, the collapse of Imperial Russia, and Germany\'s role in the continuance of a bloody war that led to economic collapse and the rise of Hitler.\nRegarding Russian history, he portrays Lenin\'s role in the rise of the Bolsheviks as a ploy of the German intelligence service as an attempt to divide and conquer Russian resistance on the eastern front.\nHe does not clearly explain the rise of Stalin as Lenin died.\nThis may be better explained in the second volume (he does this at about page 500 of Volume 2, which seems to understate the role of Stalin in Europe and US history).\nThroughout the novel, several chapters are devoted to the rise of women\'s rights in Britain and role of the Labour party in promoting issues affecting worker safety in a mining accident in Wales.\nThrough these chapters, he displays the considerable differences in social status of the miners and the owners of the mines in quality of life, health and education.\nWith tragic accuracy, Follett reviews the misery and suffering of soldiers in the trench warfare of the time, including, poison gas, futile charges against artillery and machine gun posts etc.\nthe war continues, thousands are slain and the so-called leaders continued to promote it as a victorious exercise.\nFollett focuses on how industrial interests on both sides benefited from the war, continuing it as factory production went up and the dead were brought back to England.\nThe book explores background of Germany at the time, the costs of their endless efforts to "win" leading to a loss that later was cause for a forlorn corporal, Adolf Hitler, to seek his own revenge for the economic devastation of the Weimar Republic under the settlement treaty.\nThe characters and their extended families find their fortunes changing for the better and for the worse due to both their interactions with each other and the effects of the First World War.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fall of Giants
  Hughes had accused Wilson of failing to prepare America for war, but this had backfired. Americans were more determined than ever to remain nonaligned after Britain's brutal suppression of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Britain's treatment of the Irish was no better than Germany's treatment of the Belgians, so why should America take sides?
  When he had read the papers, Gus loosened his tie and napped on the couch in the study next to the Oval Office. He was unnerved by the prospect of leaving the White House. Working for Wilson had become his bedrock. His love life was a train wreck, but at least he knew he was valuable to the president of the United States.
  His concern was not just selfish. Wilson was determined to create an international order in which wars could be avoided. Just as next-door neighbors no longer settled boundary disputes with six-guns, so the time must come when countries, too, submitted their quarrels to independent judgment. The British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had used the words "a league of nations" in a letter to Wilson, and the president had liked the phrase. If Gus could help bring that about his life would mean something.
  But now it looked as if that dream was not going to come true, he thought, and he drifted into a disappointed sleep.
  He was woken early in the morning by a cable saying that Wilson had won Ohio—a blue-collar state that had liked the president's stand on the eight-hour day—and Kansas, too. Wilson was back in the running. A little later he won Minnesota by fewer than a thousand votes.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fitz had been on the battlefield and had learned that gallantry had to be tempered with cool calculation. He knew that on his own he could not save Andrei from the mob. But he might be able to rescue Valeriya.
  He stepped into the hall. All attention was on the supine prince. Valeriya stood at the edge of the throng, beating ineffectually on the shoulders of the peasants in front of her. Fitz grabbed her by the waist, lifted her, and carried her away, stepping back into the drawing room. His bad leg hurt like fire under the burden, but he gritted his teeth.
  He heard a second shot, and sensed an impact. He thought for a moment that he had been hit, but there was no pain, and he dashed for the communicating door that led to the dining room.
  Fitz burst through the door as another bullet hit the woodwork. Ordinary soldiers were not trained with pistols and sometimes did not realize how much less accurate they were than rifles. Moving at a limping run, he went past the table elaborately laid with silver and crystal ready for four wealthy aristocrats to have dinner. Behind him he heard several pursuers. At the far end of the room a door led to the kitchen area. He passed into a narrow corridor and from there to the kitchen. A cook and several kitchen maids had stopped work and were standing around looking terrified.
  Fitz's pursuers were too close behind him. As soon as they got a clear shot he would be killed. He had to do something to slow them down.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sometimes a real person goes to a fictional location, as when Winston Churchill visits Tŷ Gwyn. In that case, I have made sure that it was not unusual for him to visit country houses, and that he could well have done so at around that date.
  When real people have conversations with my fictional characters, they are usually saying things they really did say at some point. Lloyd George's explanation to Fitz of why he does not want to deport Lev Kamenev is based on what Lloyd George wrote, in a memo quoted in Peter Rowland's biography.
  My rule is: either the scene did happen, or it might have; either these words were used, or they might have been. And if I find some reason why the scene could not have taken place in real life, or the words would not really have been said—if, for example, the character was in another country at the time—I leave it out.
  As always, many of these advisers were found for me by Dan Starer of Research for Writers in New York City.
  Editors and agents who read and advised were Amy Berkower, Leslie Gelbman, Phyllis Grann, Neil Nyren, Imogen Taylor, and, as ever, Al Zuckerman.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sometimes a real person goes to a fictional location, as when Winston Churchill visits Tŷ Gwyn. In that case, I have made sure that it was not unusual for him to visit country houses, and that he could well have done so at around that date.
  When real people have conversations with my fictional characters, they are usually saying things they really did say at some point. Lloyd George's explanation to Fitz of why he does not want to deport Lev Kamenev is based on what Lloyd George wrote, in a memo quoted in Peter Rowland's biography.
  My rule is: either the scene did happen, or it might have; either these words were used, or they might have been. And if I find some reason why the scene could not have taken place in real life, or the words would not really have been said—if, for example, the character was in another country at the time—I leave it out.
  As always, many of these advisers were found for me by Dan Starer of Research for Writers in New York City.